Shadow
by ebfiddler
Summary: The crew gets a job running cattle to Beylix, and nightmares from Mal's past come back to haunt him. Don't worry, it's not ALL dark. After all, with Jayne and cows aboard, something funny is bound to happen. The usual mix of Drama/Action/Humor/Romance.  Seventh in series.
1. Chapter 1

Shadow, Part 1a

Seventh story in a series that begins with A Lion's Mouth. This story follows The Trial.

The crew gets a job running cattle to Beylix, and nightmares from Mal's past come back to haunt him.

_In the aftermath of the trial, the crew gets a new job._

_A/N: Rating: All my stories are PG to PG-13 to occasional R. You will not find detailed descriptions of blood, gore, and sex, but you will find situations appropriate for mature readers, innuendo, implication, and (gasp) swear words. This story is PG-13._

_Thanks to my sister for beta reading. Thanks to all those who have reviewed, alerted, favorited, or sent a PM. I appreciate reader feedback._

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><p>One moment he was facing two thousand years in prison and a one million credit fine, with the fate of all his crew depending on the outcome of his trial, and the next moment he was retrieving his gun and other personal effects and walking out the front door of the courthouse a free man.<p>

It was like being handed a get-out-of-jail-free card.

He'd asked about the ex-slaves—his passengers—guests—whatever the 地狱 dìyù the legal profession felt it was proper to call them. Their prospects didn't look to be so bright. It seemed that while River had uncovered a number of their true identities and histories, acquiring certified documentation of their status was another problem altogether, and he didn't trust the Alliance bureaucracy to get things sorted out expeditiously. With a few exceptions, the people would stay incarcerated at the immigrant detention center until their documents came through—could be weeks, months, or even years down the line. Mr Houghton had sworn to Mal—or he would have sworn, 'cept his religious beliefs didn't accommodate swearing—that he and his organization were on the case and they would see it through. Mal did not doubt the man's sincerity at all, but he knew he had the entrenched customs of Persephone society as well as the slow-moving Alliance bureaucracy to deal with. The man was just too earnest and too honest to speed up the process with a few well-placed bribes or threats. Of course, Mal knew he himself weren't exactly well-placed for bribes or threats either. He couldn't risk a single run-in with the law at this point, and he had barely more than two coins to rub together.

He'd thanked Melissa Draper for her expert help. He didn't know how to pay her, but she had assured him that the fees were waived. He didn't argue the point. What little coin he had left was badly needed to outfit the ship for the next job.

For a job they had. When Mal had retrieved his sidearm at the courthouse, he'd found a note inside the barrel with an encoded but easily understood message. It was unexpected, but it didn't particularly surprise him. The job was to transport—well, actually to smuggle—forty head of cattle from Persephone to Beylix.

It was a job he couldn't turn down.

'Course, it was going to be a problem taking this job, too. He had a crew that hadn't been paid, his ship was low on fuel, food, water, and medical supplies. The perpetual mechanical issues required the usual expenses for replacement parts. Outfitting the ship to transport cattle was going to require an outlay of platinum he just didn't have. Cattle required fodder, bedding, water—did he mention lots of fodder?—especially for a journey as far as Beylix was.

Mal sighed. He didn't suppose Sir Warwick Harrow had any notion of the financial burden he'd just dumped on Mal's head. After all, last time the deal had been brokered by Badger, who—for all he was a penny-pinching, double-crossing, dirty-playing low-life who'd as soon sell you out as pay you for a job—had at least fronted the money for an advance. Eliminating the middleman always had a cost, and Badger, psychotic low-life or no, was an expert middleman. Harrow had no idea how many practical details Badger had taken care of last time.

Or had he? _Huh_, Mal thought. _Maybe that get-out-of-jail-free card weren't so free after all._

. . .

"Discuss it with Harrow, sir," Zoe said, when Mal had explained the job. "Tweak the deal."

"You know very well I'm in no position to bargain with Harrow."

"Well, sir, right now we don't even have enough coin to re-fuel."

"Didn't the cargo containers fetch nothing from the salvage yard?" Mal asked.

"They were seized as 'evidence'," Zoe replied.

"该死 Gāisǐ. Little as they're worth, I was counting on it to cover fuel costs. Can't we get them released somehow?"

As usual, Zoe had the needful information at her fingertips. "You can fill out a form, pay a processing fee, and they'll be released after a twenty-day waiting period."

"Ain't planning on sittin' dirtside for no twenty days. We need a Plan B—a supplemental job."

"Badger?" offered Zoe.

"No good. Harrow's workin' an end-run around Badger. We need to get gone before Badger figures it out."

"Holden Brothers? They still owe you, sir."

"Holden Brothers don't deal on Persephone, Zoe, it's Wuo's territory. I can't jeopardize the Holden contact to deal with Wuo."

"Horowitz."

"I'll have to. He ain't likely to have much of a job worth having—but I reckon it's our best chance. You stay with the ship, Zoe. I'll take Jayne."

"Sir, Horowitz was in _my _unit when we were on Verbena—I should come with you."

"No. Too much likelihood of gunplay." Zoe started to launch another protest, but Mal overrode her objection. "You got another life to think on, Zoe."

. . .

Mal and Jayne were off trying to rustle up some work out of Horowitz. He was another luckless ex-Browncoat, even more luckless than Mal and Zoe, which was saying something. He'd been part of Zoe's unit when they'd been detached from the 57th Overlanders for some stealth operations. Zoe was always good at stealth. Mal hadn't participated in the detached operation—he'd been with the main unit breaking in the new lieutenant, something that happened far too often over the course of the war. Horowitz wasn't a bad sort at all, but Zoe was right—she knew him much better than Mal did. These days, Horowitz scraped by running a sort of junk shop that doubled as a fence operation. Occasionally he needed transport for his goods (usually the hot ones), which was why they were even paying him a visit. His operation was in one of the worst parts of town and made Badger's shop look upscale. If he had any work for them, it wouldn't amount to much, unless he'd caught a lucky break somehow. But good luck and Horowitz were rarely seen together.

Zoe welcomed the return of Simon, River, and Inara. Zoe and Kaylee had spent most of their time since returning from the jail cleaning up after the thirty-two guests. The biggest chore was septic vac, which took far longer and was far more unpleasant than at anytime in Zoe's memory. Simon, River, and especially Inara would do just about anything to avoid septic vac duty, and Zoe fully intended to exploit it. She'd get them to do all manner of other chores that remained undone. She especially wanted to free up Kaylee to assess the ship's mechanical needs and make a list of necessary replacement parts. There was no way they'd be able to afford Kaylee's full wish list, but ever since the failure of the compression coil catalyzer had nearly cost all of them their lives, Mal had put a higher priority on maintenance, and Zoe wanted to be ready with the list as soon as the coin was available.

To Zoe's chagrin, Inara informed her that Ip Neumann was intending to pay them a visit. Zoe regarded their former supercargo with caution. He seemed harmless enough, a young scientist on the loose, researching terraforming accidents and writing up papers for publication in the scientific journals, but the fact that he had worked for Blue Sun Corporation just a few short months ago rang all sorts of alarm bells in her. River Tam had been a fugitive ever since her arrival on board Serenity. She'd been pursued by the Alliance, bounty hunters, and creepy men in suits wearing blue gloves—the infamous Hands of Blue. The Operative had said he'd arrange for the Alliance to rescind River's fugitive status, and apparently he'd been as good as his word. But the Blue Hands—Blue Sun's private operatives—were still after River. Anything that could connect River and Serenity to Blue Sun worried Zoe, and so she was still reserving judgment on Neumann. The funny thing was, River herself seemed to have taken a shine to the young man.

As it happened, even Zoe was ready for a break when Ip Neumann showed up bearing containers of take-out food from one of Persephone's finest Chinese restaurants. Inara, Simon, and River all seemed to have bonded with Neumann during the last week—they'd worked together to get the charges against the Captain dropped, with Neumann running point, as he was the least obviously affiliated with the crew of the Firefly. Neumann also seemed to have worked his own contacts in the Captain's favor. This should have made Zoe regard him more positively, but the suspicious part of her (it was a healthy portion, and it had saved her 屁股 pìgu many a time in the war and afterwards) wondered just why Neumann was so interested in turning favors for the crew of Serenity. She didn't believe it was simply out of the goodness of his heart. Kaylee, on the other hand, clearly did.

"Ip! You brought Szechuan string beans! My favorite!" Kaylee gushed. Everyone was appreciating the bamboo shoots, bitter gourd, snow peas, and straw mushrooms abounding in the food, but Kaylee was the only person who could attain a state of spiritual ecstasy over fresh vegetables.

Zoe thanked Neumann for his role in springing the crew out of jail.

"I just couldn't believe they'd throw the book at the Captain like that," Ip said. "After what he did, rescuing those slaves—to be accused of slave trading—that must have been really galling."

"Captain's never really put a lot of trust in the system—Alliance often doesn't know well enough to do the right thing, in my opinion." Zoe had a lot of opinions about the Alliance, most of them unprintable, but she wasn't about to share them with a Core-bred youngster like Neumann.

"The Captain acted on his ideals," Inara put in. "He has a noble heart, although he tries to hide it." Zoe was surprised to hear Inara praising Mal this way, knowing as she did that they'd quarreled just before the slave rescue, and had barely spoken to each other since. She just _knew_ the Captain had gone and called Inara "whore" again—the 傻瓜 shǎgūa couldn't manage to lose that word from his vocabulary—and got himself in the doghouse with Inara. Now she was calling him noble. Maybe there was hope for him yet. Of course, Inara might have a harder time hanging on to that notion of "noble" when confronted with the reality of Mal—especially if he returned in one of his gloomy, grumpy moods. Zoe reckoned that a near certainty, given that he was visiting Horowitz.

"They say no good deed goes unpunished," Neumann said.

"So, do we have a job?" Simon interjected. Zoe scowled inwardly. The Doc had no sense, discussing private business in front of a stranger. But she answered Simon's question.

"It happens we do. One that we cannot afford to do."

"So why are we doing it, then?" Trust Simon to ask the obvious question.

"We can't afford not to." Zoe wasn't about to mention that it was a smuggling job. Neumann didn't need to know about any of Serenity's less-than-legal activities. "Transport job to Beylix," she added.

"I thought jobs were supposed to pay," Simon continued.

Zoe answered, "It does pay—after the fact. But no advance."

"Do we need an advance?" For top three percent, sometimes Simon was quite slow on the uptake.

"You are such a boob," River said, rolling her eyes.

Zoe answered Simon's question. "Yes. We can't afford to re-stock food stores or even a complete load of fuel. Plus this cargo requires some special fittings and stores, all of which require cash up front." She anticipated Simon's next stupid question. "Captain expended all his reserve funds on this slave rescue operation. Got no more 'n a credit to his name."

"Surely the Captain has business contacts here on Persephone—someone he could ask for a job," Neumann suggested.

"Captain already used up all the good will he got on this planet and then some," Zoe replied. She didn't add that the Captain could hardly go seeking a legitimate transport job when he knew his hold would soon be filled with smuggled cattle.

"What about the Abolitionist Society?" Kaylee asked. "They seemed like good folk. Mayhaps some one of them has a job we could do."

"Can't export abolition."

"I suppose we could take on paying passengers," Inara suggested.

This time it was Simon who responded. "Passengers to Beylix? I can see it now: 'Take a sight-seeing tour to Beylix, Garbage Dump of the Kalidasa System'."

"All right, point taken," Inara responded.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure," River announced.

"I know I'm not part of the crew…" Ip Neumann began.

"No, you ain't," Zoe responded, but her reply was overwhelmed by Kaylee's simultaneous one. "As good as!" she exclaimed, enthusiastically supported by Simon and Inara.

"…but I have an idea," Neumann continued. He gathered himself up and took his leave. "I'll be back later."

. . .

glossary

地狱 dìyù [hell]

该死 Gāisǐ [Damn]

屁股 pìgu [ass]

傻瓜 shǎgūa [fool]

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><p><em>Please review!<em>


	2. Chapter 2

Shadow, Part 1b

_Mal and Zoe try to find enough funds to get Serenity off the ground; Mal and Inara have words._

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><p>Mal and Jayne came back to Serenity, tired, dusty, and both in a foul mood. Zoe didn't even need to ask to know the quest for a paying job was fruitless. But Mal wanted to talk to her, probably just because it was better than talking with Jayne, in whose gracious company he'd just spent the last few hours. Jayne was rough company even at the best of times, and this time he had started out in a bad mood—amazing what not getting paid and spending a few days in jail could do to a fella's mood. Jayne's mood had been disimproved by tramping across town and back on foot—it cost money they couldn't afford to run the mule. Add to it that Horowitz had been a bust and Mal wouldn't even let him shoot at anybody, and Jayne's foul mood had grown to colossal proportions.<p>

"No job," Mal said.

"Man was more like to need charity himself," Jayne grumbled darkly, "and I weren't in no giving mood."

"He needed a philanthropist," Mal stated.

_Now where did that come from?_ Zoe wondered.

Jayne was on a roll. "Shoulda just held up that armored car we saw over by the megamart. Get all the coin we need. Make a quick getaway."

"And get thrown back in jail, Jayne? Good thinking." Mal couldn't fathom Jayne's line of thought. A quick getaway on what? A ship with no fuel, no food, no water. No point countering Jayne's assertions with rational argument, Mal realized. Man was just blowing off steam. Might as well let him get it out of his system.

"Woulda worked," Jayne said sullenly.

"If our goal was to rot in jail, Jayne, yeah, it woulda worked great."

. . .

Mal climbed the stairs from the cargo bay wearily. He hadn't even actually been on trial, but 该死 gāisǐ if it didn't feel like he had. The arraignment had taken a lot out of him, and he wanted nothing more than a cup of tea and a bit of shut-eye in his bunk. But as he passed near Inara's shuttle, she put her head out and beckoned him in. They'd exchanged barely more than a dozen words since their acrimonious discussion on the bridge en route to 泥球 Ní Qiú, and he was prepared for an awkward conversation.

But Inara surprised him by placing a stack of bank notes in his hand, saying only, "Rent."

Mal was completely taken aback. He and Inara had never discussed shuttle rent since she had rejoined Serenity after his encounter with the Operative at the Training House. Rejoined? Who was he kidding? It wasn't like she'd had any kind of choice. How was the invitation worded? "_Stay here and let the Operative kill you now, or come along with me and the Operative will kill us all later_." He'd practically abducted her. That they'd survived Miranda was the dumbest of dumb luck. And was he then going to say, _"And for that thrilling brush with death, you owe me two months' rent"_? Then they'd started sleeping together, and the notion of rent in such circumstances turned his stomach. No gentleman would charge his girlfriend rent for sharing his bed on his own ship. But was he a gentleman? And was she even still his girlfriend, or had he screwed that up beyond all recovery? 哎呀 Āiyā, it was what he'd always said, shipboard relationships made things complicated. He felt confounded. But it was a fact that Serenity wouldn't fly without an infusion of ready money, and it was his duty as captain to see to the needs of the ship. So he said, "A loan. Not rent." He felt the flush rising up his chest and throat, creeping into his cheeks, and he looked away. "谢谢 Xièxie." He cleared his throat. "This'll keep us flying."

He knew he owed her thanks for a lot more than just the loan. He didn't know how to say it—didn't reckon he could say it nice and polite-like. He really and truly was glad to be out of jail, but…he tried to shove the unbidden thoughts aside. Knowing he was going to say it badly, he soldiered on. "I reckon I oughtta thank you for pullin' strings, workin' your contacts and gettin' me outta jail." As he said it, his head filled with a vision of Inara with her clients—the advocate, the immigration inspector, the judge. It clenched at his heart, making him almost physically ill. "Heartsick" was not just an expression, he decided, but something felt in the most visceral way. She may have been motivated by a desire to help him, but being helped in this way felt like being poisoned. It was hard to express gratitude with thoughts like these running through his head, so his thanks came out as churlish at best. "Thanks for savin' my sorry carcass."

"That's not a very graceful thank you, Mal, considering how much trouble I went through."

Now the bitterness and anger took hold of him. Knowing he'd regret his words, he still couldn't stop himself. "Took you away from your clients, didn't I? Cut into your income-producing time, I conjure. Sorry 'bout that," he added sarcastically.

Inara's eyes flashed, but she spoke calmly. "Actually, Mal, I only addedthose clients to aid your case. My schedule here on Persephone was already filled with the—other business I told you about. I had to cut that short to work the contacts necessary to secure your release."

"Grease the skids, so to speak." It was almost a sneer.

"Don't be coarse, Mal."

"Coarse comes to me natural-like."

"And rude," she spoke with some heat.

"Oh, now, coarse _and _rude!" Mal's voice was raised. "What's next? Common? Boorish?" He spat out the words.

"Uncommonly boorish."

Mal turned his back and began to walk away, but Inara spoke up vehemently. "You called mea liar."

He turned back. "A liar and a whore, actually."

"How dare you—" she began.

"Sorry," he interrupted. He was unsure at first if this was a sincere apology or not. "I shouldn'ta said it. I just—" he broke off at the unforgiving look on her face. Not. Definitely not. He was seething with anger and he was about to say still more that he'd regret later.

"Listen, Mal, I've gotten used to the 'W' word—亲爱的佛 qīn'àide Fó, you've used it often enough. It barely stings anymore. But how dare you call me a liar."

Mal paused momentarily. It was the word _liar _that had gotten under her skin? He rushed to his own defense. "When you got secrets you won't tell me—"

"And you have no secrets that you keep from me, Mal?"

He was momentarily silenced.

"I'll match your level of openness—or secrecy," she continued. "I have reasons for not disclosing my business on Persephone. It's something I can't talk about now. It was difficult—exhausting. I have been—"

"Next time, don't try your wiles on me," he blurted.

"What?"

"You coulda just said, 'I got secret business on Persephone, I need to go there,' 'stead of sweet-talking me, kissin' me like—well, like it _means_ something—just to get me _compliant. _Inara, it ain't that you got _business _that bothers me—"

That drew a derisive snort from Inara.

"—well, it ain't _just_ that you got business," he admitted, but only to himself. Out loud he continued, "—it's that you tried to play me."

He stopped and looked directly into her eyes. He couldn't bring himself to say how much that hurt him, the thinking that she'd play him. That she'd play _him_, exactly as if he were one of her clients.

Inara stared into Mal's eyes, trying to fathom the depths. She _knew_ Mal had been unreasonable, calling her liar and whore, as if he'd never told a lie in his life, as if he stood on a pedestal of honesty and virtue, with his smuggling, thieving ways. She stood firm in her righteousness, and he barreled on with his unreasonable, angry, rude retorts—and then he pulled her right off her high horse with those words. _"You tried to play me."_ 亲爱的佛 qīn'àide Fó, she _had _tried to play him. In trying to avoid hurting him in one way, she'd hurt him in another. _She had hurt him_. It wasn't all his fault. It was her fault, too.

"I'm sorry, Mal," she whispered. She dropped her eyes and turned away.

"I'm sorry, too, Inara," he said softly, and left the shuttle.

. . .

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glossary

该死 gāisǐ [damn]

泥球 Ní Qiú [name of a world]

哎呀 Āiyā [Damn]

谢谢 Xièxie [Thank you]

亲爱的佛 qīn'àide Fó [dear Buddha]

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><p><em>Your review is like fuel to keep flyin'!<em>


	3. Chapter 3

Shadow, Part 2a

_Serenity gets under way with a cargo of cattle. Mal gives Wash lessons in how to tick off the woman he loves...or it is the reverse?_

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><p>Ip Neumann hurried through the crowds at Eavesdown Docks toward Serenity with an excited step. He'd been in touch with his thesis advisor at Harcliffe University. He filled her in on his adventures and doings since leaving Blue Sun. He told her about the contacts he'd made, the plans he had. She'd been skeptical, wondering, then excited. She had just the thing, she said, and would wave him back shortly.<p>

Professor Rao was as good as her word. Within the day, she had waved him back with exciting news. She had a continuing grant to study gravitational field anomalies, and a custom-built piece of laboratory equipment was waiting at the premises of Kirkegaard and Rhim Laboratories on the outskirts of Persephone City. It had been awaiting suitable arrangements for transportation and a qualified person to run the experiment. Persephone to Beylix was a suitable run for the experiment, provided that the route went by way of the Georgia System and the captain could be persuaded to run both above and below the plane of the ecliptic in all three systems. The existence of the continuing grant meant that both the transport fee and the salary were already budgeted. Professor Rao made arrangements with the departmental comptroller and sent Ip the paperwork over the cortex. So it was with a spring in his step and a contract in hand that Ip Neumann knocked on Serenity's airlock door.

. . .

"Dr Ip." Mal greeted the young scientist with some surprise. "Didn't reckon to see you back aboard. You got yourself a new job yet?"

"Actually, yes, Captain," Ip Neumann answered with excitement. Then he looked at Mal with some doubt. "But it depends on you."

"Don't see what your new job has to do with me."

"I've got a scientific experiment that needs a ship to fly on. It comes with funding. Advance payment." Neumann offered Mal the contract to read.

The contract was straightforward enough. He'd have to adjust the course he had planned to Beylix, and it would definitely take longer. He had some misgivings, but he also felt that there was no manner of choice. Serenity had a cargo of cattle that he couldn't refuse, and he was in desperate need of funds to get that cargo off the ground. Turning back to Neumann, Mal offered his hand and said, "Deal. You can fly, Neumann. Welcome back aboard."

. . .

Mal had to admit that Neumann's scientific cargo was a life-saver. Along with Inara's loan, the advance money from the experiment provided just enough to restore Serenity's supply of food, fuel, and medicine, and let them acquire the fittings necessary to ready Serenity's cargo bay for the arrival of forty head of cattle. Kaylee had a wish-list of parts as long as her leg, but most of them would have to wait. It was important that the artificial grav system be put in good order—a grav failure en route with loose hay and cowpies would be like to contaminate the atmo intakes. He didn't even want to think about how it would spook the cattle if they found themselves suddenly in zero g, nor the kind of injuries that might result from a sudden restoration of grav with forty cattle spinning and floating free in the cargo bay. So repairs and back-up parts for the artificial grav system all got the green light. A heavy-duty, high-capacity septic vac system had to be installed. They hadn't bothered with it the last time they'd moved cattle for Sir Warwick Harrow. That trip had been relatively short, and even so, Mal had regretted it. The trip to Beylix was lengthy and he didn't want a hygienic emergency on his hands. Even back on Shadow where he grew up, with a whole planet's worth of room, the question of what to do with the manure of a large number of confined cattle weren't no joke. The flight path dictated by Neumann's scientific experiment would add five days to their trip, and required them to take on extra fuel to power the thrusters and attitude jets for the maneuvering above and below the solar ecliptic. Mal helped Kaylee and Jayne install a waterproof decking to cover the steel grating in the cargo bay. Didn't want no unmentionables leaking down into the electrical wiring and conduits that underlay the entire cargo bay, causing shorts and corrosion.

Then there was the pure volume of fodder required to feed the cattle. Even in a compressed, dehydrated (and expensive) form suitable for space flight it took up a great deal of space, and most of Shuttle Two and a good portion of the passenger lounge were packed with bales of green stuff.

Simon laid in stocks of veterinary medicine—a cattle plague striking in transit would be a disaster. Mal oversaw all the preparations with a dogged thoroughness that hid his underlying perplexity. Having grown up on a ranch, he was no stranger to the notion of shipping cattle through space. It was just that, in his experience, cattle were generally shipped in the form of beef products, usually frozen, sometimes dehydrated. Semen from prize bulls was often shipped (that didn't hardly take up no room at all)—embryos in stasis (required a constant temperature freezer, but again, didn't take up much room)—occasionally weaned calves were shipped to start a new herd. Mal was sure Harrow had a reason he was willing to pay good money for shipping a whole herd, but damned if he could figure it out.

. . .

Mal informed Zoe that he'd accepted a contract to fly Ip Neumann and his scientific experiment to Beylix. "So, looks like he'll be with us a while longer." He shared a look with Zoe. They were both thinking along the same lines. He'd taken Neumann aboard for what should have been a simple, single delivery: grav modifiers to 泥球 Ní Qiú. The man just didn't seem to want to go away.

"Feel like he's bird-dogging you, sir?"

Mal looked his assent. "A bit." Zoe was still looking for him to open up with what was really bothering him, so he said, "Dr Ip's got a notion that I been to Miranda. Asked me about it, straight up." He shared another meaningful look with Zoe. "You?"

"Didn't ask me, sir."

"Don't know where he got the notion, but it's clear he don't know the full story." They shared another meaningful look. Neither one intended for Ip Neumann ever to know the full story. They worked in silence for a while, side by side, Zoe waiting for Mal to say more.

"Makes me more 'n a mite skittish, his connection to Blue Sun," Mal said at last.

Zoe expressed her worry. "How do we know he ain't still workin' for them?"

"He came aboard on Jack Holden's recommendation." Mal knew that the Holden Brothers didn't have any love for Blue Sun. That didn't mean Jack had thoroughly vetted Neumann. But if Neumann was still working for Blue Sun, why would he be so open about his connection with them? Why would he have helped them with the slave escape? It was possible, sure, that he was throwing them off the scent by playing the innocent, but the man had "straight arrow" written all over him.

"He's won over the hearts and minds of most of the others," Zoe said, clearly not including herself among that group.

Mal nodded. Even Simon had taken to Neumann, ever since the trial on Persephone. Neumann had labored on behalf of Serenity's crew, when he could have just walked away. Again, the question was, had he some kind of ulterior motive? "River likes him," Mal said. Only Zoe knew him well enough to interpret what he truly meant by that statement.

Zoe understood. Was it mind-reading River, or teenage-hormone River, that liked Ip Neumann? She returned Mal's look. Yep, the young man definitely needed watching.

. . .

Mal was alone on the bridge, taking his trick in the pilot's seat. It was one of his favorite spots on the ship for thinking things through. There was always something to think on.

He had a cargo hold full of cattle—and a beeping, blinking crate that housed the main part of Neumann's scientific experiment. The science experiment also had an external unit—Kaylee had mounted it to the outside of the hull—that transmitted information to the internal one. Several times a day, Neumann waded through the cow pies, de-activated the laser barrier that kept the cattle from rubbing up against the housing, stepped inside, and read the data, downloading it onto his portable sourcebox. Mal flicked the three check switches, confirmed the course settings, and stared out into the Black.

. . .

"So, how goes it, Romeo?" Mal really wasn't in the mood to discuss his relationship with Inara—if he even had one, anymore—but Wash was relentless.

"Shut it, Wash. Ain't had a sight of Inara's bed for a few weeks now," Mal said. It was humiliating to admit it, but at least Wash would stop pressing him for details.

No such luck. "What went wrong?" Wash asked. "Last time we had a heart-to-heart, it was going so well—I seem to recall that she thought you were good in bed."

"Yeah, well." Mal paused. _Hell with it_, he thought, _might as well talk it out with Wash_. "That was before I called her whore again."

"You didn't!" Wash exclaimed, accompanying his words with his best "you idiot" look.

"Yeah, I did," Mal admitted.

"Listen, Mal, you gotta erase that word from your vocabulary."

"Well—it's worse, Wash. I called her a liar, too."

"笨驴 Bèn lú. You seem to have a special talent. You should write a book—'How to Piss Off the Woman You Love'—you're so good at this, I should take lessons."

"She tried to play me, Wash," Mal said, defensively. He sounded whiny, even to himself.

"Wait, wait a minute, Mal. She actually tell you a lie?"

"Yes!" Mal responded instantly. "She said she needed to go to a civilized planet—"

Wash stared at him as he recounted their fight on the bridge, waiting for the lie to surface. When Mal had finished his whinge, he queried again, insistently, "So, an outright lie?"

"Yeah—well, uh, no. More like she was holding back something."

"Holding back something. Hmmm, Mal—does that sound like someone you know?"

"Alright, alright," Mal said, "so I don't always spill my guts to everyone." He paused. "I can be reserved."

"So when you hold back, it's being reserved, but when she holds back, it's lying?"

"No! Wash, you—" Mal sputtered. He collected his shreds of captain-y dignity. "Nothin' wrong with being reserved."

"Even with Inara? Even when she wants to share your burdens?"

Mal made no reply, and Wash tut-tutted, mumbling something about "openness" and "key to a lasting relationship." Then Wash took up the thread again. "So, you called her a whore and a liar. What did she call you?"

Mal thought for a moment.

"Thief?" offered Wash. "_Petty_ thief? She throw your smuggling in your face?"

"No, she didn't." She hadn't called him a thief, hadn't mentioned any of his illegal activities. She'd kept her dignity. And he'd never seen her look so gorram beautiful.

Wash wouldn't let him wander down that sidetrack. "So, you called her a liar and a whore, she _didn't_ call you petty thief, and you felt the need to defend your honor from insult."

"You got crazy notions, Wash."

"Yeah, well, I tried sane, but it wasn't as much fun. But isn't that what motivated the whole slave rescue thing? You needed to impress Inara with your ability to rise above petty theft—" Wash was on a roll "—you know, steal something you couldn't profit from, engage in some altruistic larceny —"

"I didn't do it just to impress Inara," Mal broke in.

"Aha! So you did it _partly_ to impress Inara," Wash crowed.

"It was the right thing to do," Mal said sullenly.

"Knight in shining armor frees the slaves. This stinks of nobility, Mal."

"No, it don't," Mal insisted. "Couldn't even do it right. They all ended up back in the can, only now it's the immigration detention center on Persephone instead of the slave pen on 泥球 Ní Qiú. I failed."

"Not entirely."

"You mean, the nobility thing?"

"No, I mean you impressed Inara."

"How do you figure?"

"Who sprung you from jail? Who got you your lawyer?"

"Inara." Realization was beginning to dawn.

"Why did she do it?"

Possible motivations ran through his head. Pity. Kindness. An abstract sense of justice. No doubt his thoughts were written on his face, because Wash just kept shaking his head, with a look that said clearly, "Lame, lame, _lame."_

And then it struck him. Love. Inara loved him.

. . .

.

.

.

glossary

泥球 Ní Qiú [name of a world]

笨驴 Bèn lú [Dumb ass]

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><p><em>AN: Was it pity? Kindness? An abstract sense of justice? What motivated you to leave a comment or review for this chapter? ;-)_


	4. Chapter 4

Shadow, part 2b

_Jayne tends the cattle. Mal and Inara contemplate the gently lowing herd. As bucolic as you can get, aboard a spaceship._

_A/N: Some strong language in this one. I blame it on Jayne ;-)_

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><p>River smiled to herself as she stood silently in the doorway to the bridge. The Captain was staring out into the Black in <em>that<em> way again—the way that meant he was having another internal confabulation. Most likely with the idea of Wash as his sparring partner: the bridge was just saturated with memories of Wash. And it didn't take a genius to know what was troubling him most. It was his relationship with Inara.

Really, the Captain was not too bad at self-analysis; he just chose such unusual means to do it. It was as if he just couldn't bring himself to say these things, even to himself—but if he put the words into the mouth of someone else—Wash, the Shepherd—then he could bear to hear them. River thought it was a bit like a writer of fiction, who could explore difficult subjects and express repugnant views, by putting them in the mouth of a fictional character and writing a scene where they let the character run with it. Mal could take the metaphorical punches and the exposure of holes in his psyche, as long as he maintained the fiction to himself that these jabs were externally sourced. River thought the Captain actually looked forward to these internal sparring matches, but could only engage in them when his mind was emptied of day-to-day worries. That was why they took place mostly when he was alone on the bridge late at night, or when he was confined to bed recovering from an injury. And he did seem to be making some progress, River thought, as she watched the emotions play out on the Captain's face.

River was very familiar with internal dialog. She had the advantage over the Captain in that she didn't have to invent the outside perspective—she merely had to _observe_, to look around her, listen to the unspoken thoughts of one of her crewmates to access an opposing point of view. Some of Serenity's crew projected their thoughts so loudly on their faces that it didn't take a mind-reading genius to figure out what they would say if they verbalized their thoughts. It was because the Captain engaged in these internal debates that he understood her best of all the crew.

River watched as the clouds cleared temporarily from the Captain's face, and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards as a hopeful thought lit his eyes. She smiled. As he shifted his position in the chair and re-checked the course settings, River knew the Captain had just resolved to try again.

. . .

Jayne headed into the cargo bay for his morning cow-tending duty. Gorram cows. Captain seemed downright spoony over 'em, like they was bringin' back all his happy memories of shiny times on Shadow afore the place got blasted all to 屎 shǐ by the Feds. Jayne couldn't see it. Now he knew as how cows was useful an' all, an' he liked fresh milk, cream, and beefsteak as well as the next man, but havin' all them cows aboard hadn't done a thing to improve the rations, seein' as how these cows warn't the kind that made milk and Mal wouldn't let him make steaks outta any of 'em neither.

No, these cows were just the kind that ate hay and made 大便 dàbiàn. This he knew in the most physical way possible, seein' as how it was mostly his job haulin' all that gorram grass around—first unburying the sofa in the passenger dorm from the mountain of hay bales stacked upon it, then unpacking the stuff from Shuttle Two. It were a longer haul from there, but at least you could toss the stuff over the catwalk rail, and that were kinda fun. Gorram grass got into everything. Captain got right pissed off if'n you tracked it all over the ship, and seemed like every time Jayne sat down he found another gorram piece of that gorram grass stuck in his 屁股 pìgu. Hell, he'd even found the gorram stuff in his bunk.

Cap'n took to the cow-tending like he was raised up to it—which he was, now Jayne come to think on it. Jayne didn't take to no cow-tending. Especially the cleaning-up part. Why was it always Jayne's job to shovel up the gorram 牛屎 niú shǐ? Didn't matter that there was a shiny new septic vac system right in the cargo bay, specially installed for that 他妈的 tāmādē 牛屎 niú shǐ. Jayne never liked septic vac duty and used to always do his best to bet it away in the frequent sessions of chore poker he'd played with the Shepherd and the Doc. He loved it when Doc lost and had to do septic vac duty, 'cause what's not to like about Top Three Percent Core Boy sucking sludge? But more often, Shepherd won the pot in chore poker and Jayne was stuck with septic vac anyhow. 哎呀 Āiyā but he missed the Shepherd. Man was a freaky-ass good poker player, and again Jayne wondered what the 地狱 dìyù the man had been before he turned Shepherd.

Jayne looked up from his work to see that annoying science-doctor 'Noyman pickin' his way across the cargo bay, tryin' to step around the 牛屎 niú shǐ and keep his pretty shoes clean. Did it every day, several times a day, gettin' to that gorram blinky machine of his settin' in the middle of them cows. Jayne liked to be workin' the cows when 'Noyman came to do his thing 'cause baitin' him was almost as much fun as baitin' the Doc. A man needed a little Doc-baitin' to keep his spirits up.

Jayne picked up his shovel and the nozzle end of the hose, and angled closer to Doc 'Noyman.

. . .

After dinner, Mal made his rounds, walking the ship and checking on things. He ended in the cargo bay, where he settled down on the lower catwalk. He picked up the jug of Kaylee's engine-wine he had brought with him and poured a bit into his battered metal mug. He took a swig and pulled a face. 哎呀 Āiyā if this batch weren't—how did Inara put it?—even more "fresh" than usual. He sipped again cautiously and contemplated the softly lowing herd.

Mal found the cattle soothing. They required tending morning, noon, and night, but for him it brought back the familiar rhythms of his Ma's ranch back on Shadow. Shadow, that place he where he was born, that place that didn't exist no more, that place destroyed in a rain of fire…best not go down that path. He remembered Granny MacEachern ringing the dinner bell, all the hands turning to for dinner after a long, hard day's work. Granny MacEachern had showed him how to make biscuits light and fluffy. When he was still quite a little boy, she'd stood him on a chair so he could reach the counter and let him cut the biscuits with the round tin cutter. She only chided him gently when he didn't get very many circles cut out of the flat expanse of dough. She'd told him that re-rolling toughened the dough, and he learned to do better. His favorite part was watching her place the cut biscuits on top of the bubbling surface of the pot pie, like she was dealing a deck of cards, and he loved watching through the glass oven door as the biscuits popped up high. Mal took another sip of the wine and discovered that Inara was standing nearby.

"Drinking alone, Mal? You shouldn't do that."

"Won't be drinking alone if you join me." He turned his head and looked up toward her with the slightest hint of a smile.

Inara settled down on the edge of the catwalk, her feet dangling over the edge. Mal produced a second cup, filled it, and offered it to her. She clinked her cup against his and took a sip, pulling a little face. "Thank you for the wine. It's very…"

"Fresh?" he offered.

"Well, I was going to say something else, but 'fresh' will do."

"To Kaylee and her inter-engine fermentation system," he toasted, and again they drank, both pulling simultaneous sour faces. "Maybehaps Kaylee's losing her touch."

Inara looked her agreement with that assessment. After a pause, she asked, "What were you thinking, a few moments ago, when I first came over?"

"Just before you spoke? I was thinkin' about biscuits."

"Biscuits? I never would have guessed." Her laugh was like the music of the brook, rippling over the smooth stones.

"Biscuits, and pot pie."

She raised her eyebrow with a little smile and waited for him to continue.

"Granny MacEachern back on Shadow taught me the fine art of biscuit-making. Don't get to practice it much here on Serenity."

"I hadn't thought about it before—why don't we bake much, here on Serenity?"

"No oven."

"How did Kaylee ever manage to make that birthday cake?"

"You might recall that Kaylee's birthday cakes are always a mite…chewy."

"Hmm."

"That's on account of no oven. Well, and also on account of not much flour. And no butter. And nothin' but reconstituted eggs. Actually, come to think on it, it's near miraculous Kaylee's ever made anything even resemblin' a cake, given the limitations."

They looked at each other, remembering the misshapen cylinder of lumpy protein Kaylee had produced for the most recent birthday. Chewy was a charitable description. But it had been covered with chocolate frosting of a sort, and they both remembered how eagerly everyone had partaken of the cake, how greedily they had devoured seconds. Their smiles rose and reached their eyes and bubbled over into laughter. Mal choked on his engine wine and Inara reached over to thump him on the back.

When he stopped sputtering, it was a simple, natural thing for her to leave her hand on his shoulder, for him to place his arm around her waist.

"Mayhaps if we're dirtside for long enough, and can find us an oven, I'll make you some biscuits."

"And some pot pie, too?"

"'Course. An' a cherry pie for dessert."

Inara sighed and rested her head on Mal's shoulder, visions of cherry pies dancing in her head. Mal closed his eyes and drank in the scent of her hair. Contentment. Serenity. That's what he felt, sitting here, peaceful-like, Inara nestling close to him, the quiet sounds of the cattle below.

A loud bellow from one of the animals directly below startled them both out of the reverie. Looking to see there weren't really anything going on with the animal, Mal observed, "It is good to have cargo."

"It makes us a target for every other scavenger out there," Inara said.

"But sometimes that's fun too," Mal finished, and they both burst out laughing again.

"We should run cattle more often."

. . .

Zoe watched as Mal walked Inara to the door of her shuttle, kissed her goodnight, and made his way down the hall toward his bunk. Seems they'd managed to mend fences a bit, though, clearly, they still had a ways to go. Watching her friend heal his heart was helping her heal her own.

. . .

.

.

.

glossary

屎 shǐ [shit]

大便 dàbiàn [poop]

屁股 pìgu [ass crack]

牛屎 niú shǐ [cow poop]

他妈的 tāmādē [f-king]

哎呀 Āiyā [Damn]

地狱 dìyù [hell]

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><p><em>Please leave a comment or a review!<em>


	5. Chapter 5

Shadow, Part 3a

_Plans for a spacewalk as Serenity nears Shadow_

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><p>"No. Ruttin'. Way," Mal said.<p>

"But, Captain, please, reconsider. It's a one-of-a-kind opportunity. The scientific data that could be gathered are unparalleled anywhere." There were few things Ip Neumann wouldn't do to get the Captain to say yes.

"I said no. Why are we still talkin' about this?"

"Can't we be reasonable about this?"

"I'm bein' all manner of reasonable."

"Will you at least inform me of the nature of your objections?"

"That I will. You're askin' me to authorize a shut-down of artificial gravity as we make the planetary fly-by, correct?"

"Yes, Captain, exactly."

As the Captain spoke, Ip realized with some surprise that he had nearly forgotten his first impression of the man at Jack Holden's office, when the Captain had demonstrated his technical competence in no uncertain terms. He had become more familiar with the Captain, he realized, and his impression of him had drifted from that first encounter. Now he was more accustomed to hearing the Captain grouse and grumble and swear in Mandarin and to the Captain in his infrequent light-hearted moments bantering with the crew. Lately, he'd noticed the Captain in a serious, darker mood, wandering about near Inara's shuttle. There was also the reckless hero, rescuing slaves and pouring blood. And he still recollected that dark moment on 尘球 Chén Qíu when he saw Captain arrive on board in the dead of night with apparent stolen property. Now the capable professional had returned and Ip realized the Captain was enumerating a number of valid reasons why a shut down of artificial gravity was a difficult proposition. "But that doesn't even take into consideration the kind of cargo I'm carryin'." Mal paused to let the point sink in.

Oh. Right.

"I ain't prepared to make an experiment on how cattle take to weightlessness, Dr Ip, and I ain't willin' to experiment in how free-floatin' cattle fare when ship's gravity suddenly returns. I spent a fair amount of the advance money that _you _provided puttin' in safeguards to make sure that exact thing you're askin' me to do didn't happen accidental. So I take it you're now understandin' why my answer is still No."

"Yes, sir."

Mal could see the wheels were still turning in that boy's top-percent Core-educated brain. He waited to see what was the next 疯子的 fēngzidē idea to come forth. It weren't a long wait—the boy was bright.

"Captain—you mentioned EVA suits—would you have one that fits me?"

Mal nodded and waited for Neumann to flesh out his idea.

"So I take it that it wouldn't be a problem for me to take a spacewalk and do the experiments outside the ship?"

"Might could do. No one takes an EVA alone, Ip. So provided you got a couple of willing volunteers, I think you got a solution to your problem."

. . .

Ip first approached Simon to ask if he'd be willing to accompany him on his EVA experiment. A well-educated doctor, used to performing experiments himself, would be the perfect assistant. Ip would scarcely need to instruct at all. But to his surprise, Simon refused categorically. Simon expressed himself in terms more formal than the Captain's "no ruttin' way" but was equally unmovable. Ip was still processing Simon's refusal when River entered the room.

"I could help," she said, with a bright smile that was somehow disconcerting.

He was about to explain that the work involved some difficult calculations that had to be made on the fly, that he needed someone with a certain technical expertise, when River interrupted his thoughts.

"Know what you need. Did the math." She smiled again, this time somewhat smugly, and Ip remembered how she had corrected his paper on the 尘球 Chén Qíu terraforming error and how she claimed to have completed mathematics courses that Ip had taken in graduate school. He also had a recollection of River hacking—what was the fellow's name?—Wing's sourcebox and using it to access all manner of protected databases. By now, he was aware that River did most of the piloting aboard Serenity, not the Captain or Zoe as he had previously assumed. She was talented and precocious.

Ip thought again. Okay, she could probably do what the job technically required, but would she—? Again River interrupted his thoughts.

"I love walking in the Black." This time her smile was one of pure joy.

. . .

Now that Ip had lined up his scientific help for the space walk, he needed to get an experienced spacewalker to volunteer to come with him. The choices were the Captain, Zoe, and Jayne.

His first choice of course was the Captain. The Captain was still in many ways an enigma to Ip, but one thing Ip was certain of: the Captain was a man he could trust. Could trust and would trust with his life. Ip remembered his doubts about the Captain on 泥球 Ní Qiú. He had actually believed that the Captain was planning to enter the slave-trade. Turned out the Captain was conducting a careful reconnaissance in preparation for breaking those people out of slavery. And he had succeeded. Got thirty-two slaves safely off 泥球 Ní Qiú and on their way to freedom. Did it without hope of reward. And when it resulted in his arrest on Persephone and the prosecutor threw the book at him, he didn't deny he'd done it, or back-pedal, or try to shirk responsibility. He simply stood up and prepared to shoulder the consequences of his actions. Ip didn't doubt the Captain anymore.

But Ip also didn't believe he could persuade the Captain to join the spacewalk. The Captain was stubborn. When he said no, there was nothing Ip could say that would make him change his mind. And the crew would just circle the wagons again, leaving Ip on the outside.

Then there was Zoe. Serenity's first officer frightened Ip. The first time he met her, he'd watched her chew out Jayne, and given that Jayne was one of the most intimidating people Ip had ever encountered, the person who would dare to reprimand him had to be scarier still. Zoe was tough, terse, and badass to the core, and furthermore Ip knew she didn't trust him. She was professional and never said a word against him, but Ip was beginning to realize that what Zoe _didn't_ say was every bit as significant as what she did say.

And speaking of Jayne. That oaf had ruined a perfectly good pair of New Cordova leather shoes, when he slipped in the cargo bay while Ip was finishing up his data retrieval from the gravitational anomaly reader. A hefty shovelful of manure had flown in Ip's direction, while the hose sprayed wildly. He'd luckily just activated the laser barrier, so the machine was protected, but 糟糕 zāogāo, his clothes were covered with the bovine equivalent of raw sewage, which ran down his legs and drained into the shoes, while a wave of murky brown sloshed across the tops of his feet. "Whoops! 对不起 Duìbuqǐ, Doc," Jayne had exclaimed, but there was a glint in his eye that Ip didn't like. "Ain't you a sight! You should oughtta change outta them 牛屎缀满漂亮的裤子 niúshǐ zhuì mǎn piàoliang de kùzi." Ip could easily clean his clothes, and himself, but the shoes had defied all his efforts at resuscitation, and now sat, contaminated and moldering, in a sealed box under his desk.

So Ip had a choice. Which would it be? Unmoveable, scary, or 牛屎 niúshǐ?

. . .

It was the closest to home he'd come since he'd left for the war. It wasn't a surprise—as soon as he knew they had to go by way of the Georgia System, he'd plotted the course, and a fly-by of Shadow was the only one that made any sense. Nonetheless, as the planet grew from a steady point of light to a discernible disk, he felt all manner of uneasy. He'd catch sight of it out the window of the bridge and feel a prickling on the back of his neck. And the nightmares had returned.

Shadow. Since the catastrophic terraforming failure on Shadow eight years ago, the space around the planet had been an embargoed zone. No one was allowed to fly within four thousand miles of the planet's surface, supposedly for safety reasons. Mal didn't really expect any Alliance cruisers to be patrolling the area enforcing the No-fly zone, but with a herd of smuggled cattle aboard, they could not afford to be boarded and inspected. The course was calculated to stick strictly within the legal limits.

. . .

She'd said sorry, and he had, too. They'd sat comfortably together in the cargo bay, both of them reminded of the last time they'd shared Kaylee's engine wine over a herd of cattle. He'd walked her to her shuttle door, said goodnight, and given her a sweet, chaste kiss. Then he turned and walked away.

Inara wanted him to stay. Or she thought she wanted him to stay. She was ready—almost—to rebuild their relationship, to forgive the harsh words, to let him in again—almost. At least, she was ready for more than a chaste kiss, and the threshold of her door left uncrossed.

One evening she invited him into her shuttle for tea. If she'd had her instrument aboard, she might have played him music, but the dulcimer had been left behind at the Training House along with many of her things. He seemed tense—when was he not tense?—and so she asked if he'd like a massage. He'd been too tense to accept the offer—started making excuses, seemed inclined to jump up and run out—so she back-tracked, talked of inconsequential things, served more tea, and started massaging his neck casually, almost without seeming to do it.

He began to relax at her touch, and before long he was lying face down on her sofa, fully clothed of course, as she worked on the knots in his shoulders and back. She worked her way down his spine, and Mal groaned contentedly as she kneaded the tension away. He was relaxed—maybe too relaxed, she realized, as she saw his eyelids flutter.

Suddenly he was jumping up, making excuses, pulling himself away. He thanked her for the tea and the massage and was out the door before she could begin to articulate her wish that he would stay. Or that he would stay a little longer, at least. She wanted more. She didn't understand it. He couldn't have made her want him more if he'd been the most accomplished flirt, yet she knew he had no such design. Flirtation was not what was on his mind.

. . .

.

.

.

glossary

尘球 Chén Qíu [name of a world]

疯子的 fēngzidē [lunatic]

泥球 Ní Qiú [name of a world]

糟糕 zāogāo [dang it (lit., too bad)]

对不起 Duìbuqǐ [Sorry]

牛屎缀满漂亮的裤子 niúshǐ zhuì mǎn piàoliang de kùzi [shit-encrusted pretty pants]

牛屎 niúshǐ [cow poop]

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><p><em>Take a moment, breathe deep, and leave a comment or a review.<em>


	6. Chapter 6

Shadow, part 3b

_As Serenity approaches Shadow, Mal's nightmares return_

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><p>Ip was still looking for another volunteer for his spacewalk. He had approached Mal, but Mal had put him off. He had a legitimate reason—he was needed on the bridge, especially with his pilot participating in the EVA. But his devotion to captainly duty wasn't his real reason. It was the nightmares. They weren't his standard Serenity Valley nightmares—those were 很可怕 hěn kěpà, but he'd had them so often and for so many years that they'd become familiar, somehow. He couldn't exactly say they were comforting, 'cause they sure as 地狱 dìyù weren't, but if he'd suddenly been free of them he'd a' thought something was wrong. No, the nightmares that were bothering him were the <em>other<em> nightmares—the ones that started out with the standard Serenity Valley wartime shell-shock 狗屎 gǒu shǐ and then morphed into something worse, something truly awful, darker, blacker, 'til Mal feared he'd lose himself entirely to the enveloping blackness. _我将变成石头__Wǒ jiāng biànchéng shítou__. __Make me a stone. _He figured it was just a matter of time before something triggered an out-and-out flashback in his waking hours. If he was gonna be engaging in out-of-his-mind flashback violence, he'd rather do it in the ship, thank you, and not out-of-doors on a spacewalk, with the lives of Neumann and River depending on him. Mal didn't figure it was fair to ask Jayne to join Ip's spacewalking team, after him getting blown up with the navsats and all, so he tapped Zoe for the job.

. . .

It was dark, but far from serene. There was no sign of the bombardment letting up. Projectiles the size of boulders streamed overhead, each trailing a fiery orange tail across the sky, each leaving a streamer of smoke that was lit up by the next fiery round. The range was off—gorram Alliance 混蛋 húndàn couldn't aim for 屎 shǐ—and all the projectiles passed overhead of his position. For that he was grateful—he was having trouble identifying the type of ordnance being used, but the projectiles looked to be incendiary. Didn't want to have to deal with one up close and personal. Using a scope he took a look over the hastily constructed parapet they were holed up behind. On the upslope side, to the left of the line, a river of fire ran down the side of the valley. He didn't know what kind of weapon those 王八蛋 wángbādàn had brought into action up there. Maybehaps some of the incendiary projectiles had landed up there and set fire to the vegetation. But it didn't look right. It wasn't burning like a brush fire. It was like fire made liquid, it shifted and oozed down the slope. Parts of it faded to black as he watched. Parts of it lit up and glowed with renewed vigor, a red-orange color like an open skylight to the flames of hell. On the far right of the line, far enough that he couldn't make it out, an enormous cloud of smoke rose in a great high plume. He figured the seaside dockyard had been bombed—fuel depot must be burning. The cloud of smoke—or was it steam?—rose, and rose, and rose, high into the sky, high enough for the trade wind to pick it up and blow it in a steady plume to the southwest that stretched all the way to the horizon. That weren't right. There wasn't enough fuel in the entire port to create a plume that big.

The nature of the bombardment suddenly changed. No longer boulder-size projectiles. It also seemed the Alliance 混蛋 húndàn had found their range. Mal heard the sound of hundreds of smaller rounds plowing into the hard earth just behind their position. He yelled for the men and women to hunker down and take cover. Didn't have the familiar whine of bullets. What were the 王八蛋 wángbādàn using? Canister? A spent ball bounced into the trench next to his boot, and he took a look. It was—a rock? Gorrammit, were the Alliance shelling them with _rocks?_ He prodded the rock with the toe of his boot. A rock, or a cinder, more like. Had the Purplebellies run out of conventional ammunition? A particularly well-aimed burst landed in the trench some yards down the line. People were hit. A field medic trundled by, grumbling about burns. More of those gorram rocks started raining down into the trench. They pinged off his helmet. It was hard to focus with the ringing noise surrounding his head. Didn't have armor-piercing power, but they singed the fabric of his uniform. Abruptly the rock-bombardment ceased and now it was snowing. _Snowing?_ Now that didn't make no sense at all. Air wasn't cold enough for snow—this was a summer campaign—they were in the sub-tropical latitudes of this world—and the air was hot. Chokingly hot. The snow was rough, harsh, like clouds of glass shards. He tried to order his people to put on gas masks, but had trouble speaking. Had trouble breathing. Gasping, he pulled himself up to the top of the trench. Looking over the parapet, he watched with horror as a massive, molten wall of fire oozed inexorably toward them. Unstoppable, it burned and swallowed everything in its path. They had to get out of the trench. He scrambled up, clawing his way through the drifts of gritty snow, stirring up harsh clouds of sharp dust that pierced his nose and throat like needles. He was enveloped by some kind of noxious gas. Choking, gasping, flailing, heat searing his lungs, he desperately tried to suck in something breathable—

He sat up abruptly, and black spots clouded his vision. His legs were tangled in a mess of blankets and the sheet was soaked with sweat. His breath came in huge, ragged gasps and his heart was pounding like he'd just been running for his life. The fiery wall and swirling harsh clouds of choking dust faded from his mind and the black spots faded from his vision, as his breathing began to steady, more effective at actually delivering oxygen to his starved brain. He raised a hand to his forehead and found his skin was covered with clammy, cold sweat. He was in his bunk. Not the War. Not Shadow.

. . .

The Captain was dreaming so loudly that River couldn't concentrate on the mathematical problem she'd been working in her head. She gave up on it, letting the formulas, arrays, and vectors slip away into the Black, while her eyes scanned the control panel on the bridge systematically as the Captain had taught her. The Captain's nightmare was very distracting tonight, much more so than his usual ones. Serenity wasn't exactly a sound-proof boat, and again, it didn't take a mind-reading genius to figure out what sort of nightmares disturbed the Captain. Little things set him off—a chance comment someone had made at the dinner table, remembered out-of-context as he lay in that drifting zone between waking and sleeping—a sound—a smell. The little things started him down the path to Serenity Valley, re-living the worst parts of the war, again and again and again. When he stumbled up onto the bridge in the aftermath of the Valley nightmares he often wore the haunted expression that she'd come to call the "shell-shocked sergeant" look. Sometimes he'd speak to her about it, usually in response to an oblique question of hers, carefully designed to draw the poison from the wound before his barrier walls snapped firmly back into place. But if he did talk, it would be very brief, and he'd always end up by saying, "I shouldn't be tellin' you any of this 狗屎 gǒushǐ, River. This ain't your problem. You got enough burdens as it is." Then he'd clam up. But it was precisely the burdens she carried—her first-hand understanding of trauma, legacy of her time at the Academy—that allowed him to open up to her at all. The only other person aboard that he was willing to talk to about Serenity Valley was Zoe. And telling Zoe was unnecessary: she had lived it with him.

This time, the Captain's nightmare was different. River could tell. And as she gazed out into the Black, she knew why. The yellow disk of Shadow glowed steadily in their sky. Yellow from sulfur, tinged with grey from ash. She'd been on the bridge when he first recognized his home among the many stars, planets and moons the black sky showed them, and she knew as clearly as if he'd told her himself what that had done to change his nightmares.

The nightmares still started with him and his troops in the Valley. But it wasn't the same Serenity Valley that his unconscious mind visited with sad regularity. The Captain knew, and River knew likewise, that the Alliance bombing on Shadow had triggered a massive terraforming failure—a cascade of events that led to geologic instability, volcanic activity on a scale unparalleled in modern 'Verse history. Every schoolchild in the 'Verse learned the basics of how terraforming worked, and since the destruction of Shadow, every schoolchild (River among them) had learned what happened when terraforming didn't work. The Captain had a vivid imagination (River knew about vivid imaginations), and everything he'd ever learned about volcanoes was fodder for his subconscious mind in concocting the nightmares.

Now his nightmares took him to a time and place he'd not been—the destruction of Shadow. River wanted to tell him: Silly Captain—that's _not _how a volcanic eruption works. Lava rivers and massive flows—those were characteristic of shield volcanoes. Ash clouds, volcanic bombs, cinder eruptions—those characterized the stratovolcanoes. They did _not_ occur simultaneously or even in rapid succession. Poor silly Captain. It was illogical, impossible, but still she felt his terror. When he awoke, gasping for breath, River wept. The human mind could construct something far more terrible than even nature was capable of. River knew about that.

When the Captain entered the bridge after the Valley of Shadow nightmares, his haunted look had a further depth of trauma that it lacked after the Serenity Valley nightmares.

Poor Captain had conflated the most traumatic experiences of his life into one horrific nightmare. Serenity Valley—so many people, so many lives, cut off in the course of a few short weeks. Guilt. They were his responsibility and he couldn't save them. Shadow—his home, his family, his sanctuary. Gone. He should have done something—hadn't done a gorram thing. The Captain stared into the Black, unseeing, his eyes directed at the baleful yellow disk, as his breathing and heart rate gradually returned to something resembling normal. River cast a worried glance at him, but kept her tears in check.

. . .

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.

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glossary

尘球 Chén Qíu [name of a world]

疯子的 fēngzidē [lunatic]

很可怕 hěn kěpà [godawful]

地狱 dìyù [hell]

狗屎 gǒu shǐ [crap]

我将变成石头 Wǒ jiāng biànchéng shítou [Make me a stone, lit. 'I will become stone']

混蛋 húndàn [bastards]

屎 shǐ [shit]

王八蛋 wángbādàn [sons of bitches]

狗屎 gǒushǐ [crap]

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><p><em>'Tis the season to spread some cheer by writing a review or leaving a comment.<em>


	7. Chapter 7

Shadow, Part 4a

_Mal's nightmares are getting worse._

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><p>Mal finished shoveling the last corner of the cargo bay, placing the last load into the septic vac tank. He hosed off the equipment and stowed it, leaving everything neat and tidy. Walking to the door that led to the infirmary and passenger lounge, he stepped very carefully out of his old boots and into the cleaner pair that he'd left just outside. He picked up his towel and bath kit and headed to the shower.<p>

He rinsed himself off, quickly and thoroughly, carefully turning off the water while lathering and scrubbing, and he puzzled again over Jayne's grumpiness about the cattle. Jayne acted as if everything to do with the cattle was a chore. Well, of course it was a chore, but Jayne made it all into a grumpy-ass gorram chore, while for Mal it was a chance to free his mind while going through a set of soothing, automatic motions. In a way it was more restful than sleeping—especially considering the nightmares he'd been having lately. In fact, he'd been avoiding going to bed, finding all manner of captain-y things to do before turning in, taking more than his share of night watch at the helm, and, when the nightmares came, as they inevitably did whenever he did settle down to sleep, he found all sorts of reasons why he might as well just get up and start the day instead of trying to get back to sleep. An hour spent feeding and watering the cattle—and yeah, shoveling, too—was as restful as meditation, once he got into the rhythm of the work, with the benefit that his muscles were too busy moving for him actually to fall asleep—and into the gorram nightmares. Jayne just couldn't find that rhythm. Guess it wasn't Jayne's fault—his home world, best Mal could recollect, was mostly industrial. Probably never saw a cow his whole time growin' up.

A few minutes later, clean and freshly shaved and feeling like a human being again, Mal climbed the steps to the upper level. His path back to his quarters took him past Inara's shuttle, and since the door was open, and Inara didn't seem especially busy, and she just happened to look up as he passed the door, and she just happened to give him a smile, clearly the only polite thing to do was to pay a nice social visit.

Things had been going _well_, as Kaylee would put it, between himself and Inara lately. That moment they shared that bit of engine-hooch overlooking the herd of cattle seemed to have restored a feeling of easiness between them. He was determined not to blow it this time. He was going to go slow, nice and easy, get comfortable again with talking, then with touching, and only then with the—what had he been thinking, last time? Gone from first kiss to sleeping together in a matter of minutes—it was 疯了 fēngle, it was treating her like a—. Nope. Won't even think the word. Wash said he gotta erase it from his vocabulary.

Inara saw Mal look in as he was passing by with a damp towel slung over his shoulder—clearly coming from the shower. Did the man have any notion how irresistible he was when he was like this? She didn't think he did. Freshly washed and shaved, with dampness clinging to his hair and eyelashes, his skin glowing pink from scrubbing and hot water, with a boyish smile on his face and a spring in his step. And even though he said nothing more than, "Hey, Inara," it was as sweet as poetry and made her heart beat a little faster. She smiled and invited him in.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

He would. If Inara had offered him bilgewater, he woulda took it, just 'cause it was _her_ giving it. So he sat on her sofa, watching her closely while pretending to examine the carved elephant on the tea table, as she moved about the shuttle readying the tea things. All the while, they kept up a pleasant stream of chat—couldn't recollect what they were talkin' of—not important, really. Just that it stayed friendly and pleasant. His face began to feel funny and he realized that his smiling muscles were out of practice. The thought made him laugh.

_How does he do this to me?_ Inara wondered, as she realized that she'd just asked him for the second time what kind of tea he preferred. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice, just answered the question, like it was the most natural thing in the world. What was wrong with her? She could talk with assurance and ease about politics, religion, art, sport, science, literature, culture, travel. She had years of education in the art of conversation. Years of practice, 该死 gāisǐ. She was skilled at it, she could put the most awkward client at ease—choose the most comfortable topic of conversation, smooth over any roughness with just the right turn of phrase. Yet here she was, asking—for the third time, she realized, as the question slipped out of her mouth—what kind of tea he wanted. He laughed, as if she'd just said something witty.

She looked into his face. No, he wasn't laughing at her. He smiled up at her and said, "I like it when you're like this."

"Like what?" she asked. _Like an idiot? Like a schoolgirl with a crush? Like an undignified, uncontrolled—_

"Just like this," he said. "You know, just _you._" He stopped himself. Didn't want to get into waters over his head. What he meant was, he liked Inara behavin' like a natural person, just a regular woman. No fancy wiles or techniques. Not like a _Companion_. But he couldn't say a thing like that without putting his foot in his mouth—hell, he'd probably use the word _whore_ again. So he just smiled again and gestured to the sofa next to him. Inara stopped fussing over the tea and sat down.

He asked about the carved elephant he was holding. Happy to have a topic of conversation, Inara told him that the elephant represented Airavata, the white elephant ridden by the Hindu deity Indra, lord of the heavens. She told how Indra used his dazzling weapon of lightning to fight many battles. "His most famous victory," Inara continued, "was the time he slew the demon of the dark skies, and released the cows that were held in captivity."

"Well, then, let's hope he don't visit the ship here, 'cause I'm hopin' the cattle stay right where they are 'til we get to Beylix, at least."

That led to more talk about the cattle, and Inara realized that she'd learned more about Mal's youth in the last week than she had in the previous year of knowing him. When she was a little girl on Sihnon, she'd once seen a cow. Her nanny had taken her to a petting farm, a sanitized place where children could feed and pet a variety of farm animals. Inara's favorite part was watching the eggs hatching in the incubators, seeing the helpless little baby chicks, exhausted after their struggle to free themselves from their shells, lying among the shards, waiting for their downy feathers to dry so they could begin their new lives. She liked the petting farm, but her nanny had scolded her for mussing her fancy dress, and she'd had to stop at four separate hand-washing stations to sanitize the animal taint off her hands.

Mal was laughing outright now, with genuine mirth. "哦天啊 Ò tiān ā, if I'd 'a hadta wash my hands four times every time I touched an animal, I wouldn'ta had no time to do nothin' else the whole time I was growin' up!" He doubled over with laughter, and wound up laying his head in Inara's lap. He continued, "My momma was right strict, howsomever, about dirt in the house. When you finished your chores with the animals, you washed and changed before you were allowed to set down at the dinner table." He gazed up at her with a smile, and said, "Tell me more about when you were a little girl."

She did. And it felt so natural to stroke his hair as she did so. Mal listened, occasionally making a comment, visibly relaxing under her touch. At least she hadn't lost _all_ her skills, she thought—she wanted Mal to be comfortable with her, and clearly he was. He gazed at her face and blinked heavily as she told her stories and ran her fingers through that soft, feathery hair. He was comfortable and relaxed. Perhaps too relaxed, she thought, as she noticed Mal had drifted off to sleep.

Not the ending she had desired—the heaviness of Mal's head in her lap had given rise to certain sensations of heat in adjacent parts of her body—but certainly very sweet. She could gaze her fill at his face in repose without any awkwardness. She knew he spent much of his life trying to be the tough, strong captain, leader of a band of rough outlaws, and he probably would have been appalled to know that his face still expressed such sweetness in his unguarded moments. She stroked his hair and outlined his face with feather-light touches.

. . .

It was snowing. _Snowing_? Now that didn't make no sense at all. Air wasn't cold enough for snow. He shook himself. Snow didn't feel right. It was rough, harsh, like clouds of glass shards. He tried to speak, but the harsh snow choked him. He reached for his gas mask, but he couldn't find it. Reached all around, with increasing urgency, but it wasn't there. The air was hot. Chokingly hot. He couldn't breathe.

. . .

Mal stirred under her touch. His eyes were flicking rapidly back and forth under his closed lids. He shuddered. She realized she was still stroking his hair and face, so she gentled her touch and tried to speak softly and soothingly. He opened his lips and mumbled something she couldn't understand. Of a sudden, he flung his arm out, sending one of the tea cups flying across the room. Then he was thrashing, flailing, gasping. His sudden movements sent cups, saucers, and teapot to the floor in a crash of broken crockery. Was he having a seizure? He rolled violently, kicking over the tea table and scattering the carved elephant and other trinkets. Inara jumped up, frightened. His eyes were open but he didn't seem to see. He grabbed her ankle with an iron grip, the grip of desperation, as he gasped and flailed on the floor.

. . .

He had to get out of the trench. He grabbed the root of a tree, tried to get some purchase, tried to scramble up, clawing his way through the drifts of gritty snow, stirring up harsh clouds of sharp dust that pierced like needles in his nose and throat. He was enveloped by some kind of noxious gas. Choking, gasping, flailing, heat searing his lungs, he desperately tried to suck in something breathable—

Inara.

He blinked, as his surroundings came into focus. He was in Inara's shuttle, on the floor, amidst the wreckage of her tea-table. He let go of her ankle, realizing he'd been gripping hard enough to leave bruises. He propped himself up, forcing himself to breathe deeply, willing his heart rate to return to normal. His right hand was pushing hard against a piece of shattered tea cup.

"Mal, your hand—" Inara said, reaching towards him.

He looked at his hand as if it belonged to somebody else. The teacup had cut a deep gash in his palm, and it was bleeding copiously as hand wounds do. He scrubbed against his face with his left hand, trying to clear the cloud of ash out of his brain.

"Oh, uh, sorry," he rasped out. "I'm, uh, appears I'm bleedin' all over your rug," he said between ragged breaths, stating the obvious. Inara handed him a small towel, which he wrapped around his hand. "Guess I better go see the doc about this." He started to pull himself to his feet. Inara reached down and gave him a hand. "Look, Inara, no need to go mentioning this to anyone else, but, I, uh…"

"You've been having nightmares again," Inara said. It was a statement, not a question. He nodded. "Every night?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

"Ever since I spotted Shadow in the black sky out the bridge window."

"It's getting worse."

He nodded again. "The closer we get." He rubbed his face again. "Listen, Inara, I better get the doc to look—might need a stitch or two here." He held up his right hand, wrapped in Inara's hand towel. "Uh, thanks. It was nice. Real nice. Until I fell asleep and broke your tea set, that is." Not knowing what else to say, he leaned toward her, hesitated, then turned and made his escape through the open shuttle door.

Inara regarded the doorway through which Mal had just vanished. Getting him back into her bed was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

. . .

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glossary

疯了 fēngle [crazy]

该死 gāisǐ [dammit]

哦天啊 Ò tiān ā [Oh god]

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><p><em>Please review!<em>


	8. Chapter 8

Shadow, Part 4b

_Talk of pasture-raised beef leads to revelations._

_A/N: Shout out to Guildsister's magnificent fic Blue Sub Job. In it, the crew visits a Core system where four moons orbit a gas giant. They land on Delta, Inara does business on Alpha, Mal and Zoe do business on Beta, and Gamma is a factory-ranch world spoken dismissively of by Mal. I made use of Gamma with Guildsister's permission. Thanks, Guildsister!_

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><p>Dinner was 狗屎 gǒu shǐ, Jayne thought. He weren't a picky eater no how, but it irked him, eatin' more of that tasteless, slimy protein glop, when they had a whole cargo bay full of prime rib. "Why do we gotta eat this 无味 wúwèi glop when we got a whole cargo bay full a' prime rib? I could go for a prime rib…" he began.<p>

"No," Mal cut in. "We ain't turnin' the cargo into steaks, Jayne." Mal fixed him with a glare.

How was it Mal could always make him back down? Jayne wondered. Shouldn't be possible, tender-hearted man like Mal. Inara could tie him up in knots and twist him round her little finger. Yet Jayne had seen him drop a man like a cold-blooded killer enough times that he didn't doubt for a second that Mal would do him if'n he saw fit. "Okay, then," he said, as the wheels turned in his head. "I say we milk 'em."

"Can't get any milk from a gentleman cow, Jayne," Mal said with some amusement.

Jayne took a long pause to mull that over. "Hey. I knew that." He considered the implications. "You're sayin' all them cows is bulls, Mal?"

"Steers. Many of 'em are steers. But more of 'em are heifers."

"Heifers is man-cows, too?"

Mal rolled his eyes. "Heifers are female, Jayne."

"Why don't they got no milk, then?" Jayne persisted.

"A heifer is a cow that ain't had a calf yet," Mal explained, as patiently as he could.

"What does havin' a calf gotta do with milk?"

Now it was Simon who rolled his eyes. "Cows are _mammals_, Jayne."

Jayne was annoyed with the Doc for butting in with his fancy learning. What the ruttin' 地狱 dìyù do mammals got to do with this? He looked to Mal for his answer, purposely ignoring Simon.

"You ever thought about what milk is for, Jayne?" Mal asked.

Of course Jayne knew what milk is for. Taste good on cereal. Make ice cream for ice planets. Good for makin' custard. Jayne liked custard. Lick it off a spoon, lick it off a ladle. Vera used to dip her fingers in custard, let him lick it off, one finger at a time. He was thinkin' about licking custard offa some of Vera's other delicious parts—now that got a man all hot and—

The others were regarding him with strange looks.

"Milk," Mal explained, as if to an idiot child, "is for feedin' babies." He suspected, though, that Jayne wasn't the only one at the table in need of further explanation. He doubted the Core-bred portion of his crew had ever given the subject of animal husbandry much thought. He glanced toward Zoe, met her eye, and exchanged a significant look.

Inara caught the exchange. _Now what did _that_ mean?_ Inara wondered.

"Cow don't make milk unless there's a young 'un involved," Mal continued. "My momma's ranch weren't no _dairy farm_"—he said it as if there were something objectionable about dairy farms—"but I do know a dairy cow that can't get with calf no more gets turned into beef pretty quick."

"So you grew up on a ranch, Captain?" Ip inquired.

"I did," Mal answered. Looked like Dr Ip was gearing up for another one of his grill-the-crew-with-questions sessions. Though they were usually mostly grill-the-Captain sessions. Why'd the boy feel the need to ask him so many questions? Was it just something native to scientists, they couldn't help themselves asking questions all the time? Or was there something more to it? Maybe he was just too suspicious, Mal thought. Too many interrogations at that damn internment camp that ended with him getting the 狗屎 gǒu shǐ beat outta him by sadistic Alliance 混蛋 húndàn just 'cause he fought on the losing side. He put that aside. Young Dr Ip weren't a prison guard. He did seem to be asking his questions in a spirit of friendly curiosity, and he didn't seem to mean no harm, unless Mal was readin' him all kinds of wrong. 'Sides, the cattle in the hold brought back some fine and shiny memories and he was in the mood for a bit of truthsome reminiscing.

"You raised exclusively beef cattle?"

"Well, we had chickens and some other small livestock, but that was just for the family and hands. It was a beef cattle operation."

There followed a series of questions, asked mostly by Ip, about the size of the ranch, the climate and weather, the fine qualities of the grassland where the cattle ranged, the beauty of the mountains that ringed the Northside ranch. Mal volunteered some information about haymaking and the amount of fodder that had to be put up for the winter, as none of the others had thought to ask.

"What breed? Watusi Kobe?"

Mal gave a snort. "地狱的 Dìyùde no, _that's _the kind of cattle you find on factory-ranch worlds like 白虎 Báihǔ Gamma." The Captain's attitude left no doubt as to his opinion of factory-style cattle ranches. "Meat is so shot full of antibiotics and hormones it's a wonder the people eatin' it don't all sprout extra—" He cut himself off. They didn't need to hear him get on his soapbox about factory-ranch feedlots. He ramped down the tirade on the tip of his tongue and took another tack. "That breed's very popular, of course, with the fast-food restaurants in the Core."

Inara stared. What did Mal know about fast-food restaurants in the Core? Or any restaurants in the Core, for that matter. Had he ever even been to one?

Mal continued. "But the more discerning diners always preferred pasture-raised beef. Cattle what lived like cattle, free range, eatin' grass and livin' in a herd like cattle ought to do, not penned up and made to eat the surplus corn of some hyper-productive GE farm world like—" _Shut up, Reynolds,_ he thought, stepping firmly off the soapbox again. "Our herd was Shadow Angus. Finest beef in the 'Verse. Fetch a premium price with restaurateurs on the Border worlds and even in the Core. Claverley's Blanchisserie of Londinium served exclusively beef from our ranch," Mal added with a mite of pride. He bet even Inara would be impressed with that bit of intel. Claverley's Blanchisserie was Londinium's most famous five star restaurant, and he reckoned even the fancy folk of Sihnon would've heard of it.

The fancy folk of Osiris certainly had. Simon spoke. "My father tried to get reservations at Claverley's Blanchisserie one time. He was told the wait was more than a year and a half for a table."

Now Inara was even more intrigued. The notion that Mal had any acquaintance with Londinium's finest restaurant was truly something she had never considered. It was very likely she had eaten beef raised by Mal on one of her visits to Londinium. Now that was a thought to ponder.

But Ip Neumann was regarding the Captain with even more curiosity than Inara. "Shadow Angus," he said slowly. "Weren't the breeding stocks of Shadow Angus some kind of closely held trade secret?"

Mal waited in silence, wondering where Neumann was taking this.

"You know, an exclusive product—they didn't want any other people taking advantage or profit from the Shadow Angus name. I seem to remember that the people of Shadow blocked all attempts to introduce the breed to other worlds. However did you, or your mother I suppose, ever acquire breeding stocks of Shadow Angus?"

"It was easy," Mal answered. "We lived on Shadow."

Ip Neumann had gone perfectly still, except his eyes, which were growing round as saucers.

"I was born and raised on Shadow," Mal reiterated. Young Ip seemed to be having trouble wrapping his head around the info. Then something seemed to spring open in him.

"You're a native of Shadow!" Ip exclaimed excitedly. He twisted in his seat like he was about to wet himself.

It was all Mal could do to keep his eye-roll to himself. Isn't that generally what a person means when he says he was born and raised someplace? _This is well and purely stupid_, he thought angrily.

"This is just incredible!" Ip gushed. "Of all the ships in the 'Verse, I'm so lucky that I'm on the one captained by a native of Shadow! This is my dream come true. A chance to interview a Shadow native about conditions on the ground. This is so rare—I've never met a Shadow native face to face—and neither has Professor Rao, though she's advertised for years for any native of Shadow to step forward. Captain, you could hold the key that unlocks the terraforming mystery of the century!" Ip failed to notice Mal's black look, a look that got darker and darker the more he talked. "Your memories, Captain, of Shadow _before_ are a treasure trove of information—invaluable—so few people alive today have any personal knowledge of what Shadow was like before the terraforming disaster. Would you be willing to—"

"That's because they're all dead," Mal cut in with an edge of cold steel in his voice. "Alliance 混蛋 húndàn wouldn't evacuate the planet, and most of those already off-planet died in Serenity Valley." He scraped his chair harshly against the deck plating and strode off to his bunk. A moment later they all heard the hiss and clang of the hatch closing.

Ip looked around the table. Kaylee, Simon, and Inara wouldn't meet his eye. Jayne regarded him with an evil leer. Zoe held his eyes with a fixed stare that promised unpleasant death. He broke away from that disconcerting—terrifying—look, and found himself eye to eye with River.

"You are such a boob," she said.

. . .

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.

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glossary

狗屎 gǒu shǐ [crap]

无味 wúwèi [tasteless]

地狱 dìyù [hell]

混蛋 húndàn [bastards]

地狱的 Dìyùde [Hell]

白虎 Báihǔ [White Tiger, another name for the White Sun]

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><p><em>Alright, you know what to do. Click on the little button and write a comment or review!<em>


	9. Chapter 9

Shadow, Part 5a

_Serenity draws closer to Shadow, and Mal is confronted with the changes that resulted from the terraforming disaster._

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><p>Inara opened the hatch to Mal's bunk and called down, "Mal, may I come in?"<p>

"No."

"See, that's why I usually don't ask," she replied, climbing down the ladder.

"I said no," Mal reiterated with an angry look. He turned his back on her and resumed pacing. "Inara, I'm not fit for company tonight."

"You were—very fit," Inara answered. "It's Dr Ip who didn't have the good sense to shut up."

"Seems you don't either," he said rudely, making it quite clear that he wanted her to leave.

"You really aren't fit for company."

"Damn right I ain't. Said so. You should go afore I say something we both regret."

"You should talk it out, Mal."

"不要 Bù yào," he snarled, resuming his pacing.

She held her ground and waited. The minutes ticked by.

"You want I should talk?" he exclaimed suddenly. "Okay, I'll talk! You seen that planet we're headed toward?" he demanded. In truth, she hadn't especially noticed it. Which of the many points of light visible from the bridge window did he mean? But she nodded. "It's Shadow. _My home._" He exhaled loudly, rubbing his hands through his hair, and still paced furiously. "Ain't seen it since I was twenty-one." He paced another lap around the small room. "Went to the war, never came back!" He suddenly drove his fist into the bulkhead. Startled, Inara jumped. He ignored her and resumed his pacing, shaking the pain out of his fist.

He didn't speak or look at her, just paced unseeing for several minutes. She thought that he was done talking. She wondered if she should take her leave. "It's all wrong," he said with vehemence.

"What's all wrong?" Inara asked softly.

"It's yellow!" He spat. He threw something at the wall, she didn't see what. It went pinging off the wall and rolled under the bed. Inara wondered what was wrong with the color yellow. Clearly something was wrong with yellow. "Yellow like poison!" She looked at him, but he wasn't looking at her. He picked up another object from his desk as he passed, and pitched the thing at the outer wall, where it smashed. "Like the flames of hell!"

He stopped pacing suddenly, and turned to Inara. "Should be blue," he said with an intensity that shook her.

"Mal, I'm sorry…" Inara began, reaching toward him.

"Please leave," he said, turning his back on her again. "Please. Just go."

. . .

_Gorramit! _Ip thought, echoing the language he had acquired living among the crew of Serenity. _Here they go, circling the wagons again, and I'm on the outside_. What was going on? The silence at the table had become uncomfortable, the hostile stares unbearable. He was disconcerted by the unwillingness of the people he had considered friends to make eye contact. Then River called him a boob, and Inara excused herself abruptly, giving him a reproachful look as she passed out of the dining room toward the Captain's quarters. Maybe he should take himself off and hole up in his room in the passenger dorm to think things over, but he didn't want to move.

It was incredible. The Captain had been to Miranda—his friend Brother Chan 'eil Càil had told him so, and the Captain had all but confirmed that, mainly by his refusal to have anything to do with the subject. Now it seemed the Captain was also a native of Shadow. If the Captain knew anything about Ferdinand Moon—well, that would be like winning the jackpot three times in succession. What were the chances?

River could tell him what the chances were. But she held her tongue. The Captain considered Miranda, Ferdinand Moon, and Shadow for that matter, subjects to be talked about only on a need-to-know basis. And the Captain held that Ip did not need to know. River didn't agree with the Captain on this matter, but she was on his crew. The best approach would be for the Captain to convince himself that Ip _did _need to know.

. . .

Inara climbed out of Mal's bunk, and returned to the dining room. Serenity's crew was still gathered around the table, and the uncomfortable whispers stopped abruptly as she entered. "How's he taking it?" Kaylee asked, her eyes glistening with sympathy.

"Very hard, I'm afraid," Inara answered.

"It's too soon," Zoe put in. "He's not ready to talk about it."

Inara nodded her agreement. "All he would say was, it's yellow, and it should be blue." She looked at River, as if she expected her to understand the cryptic remark, and to her surprise, River looked back with lucid comprehension. "Do you understand what he meant?"

River nodded seriously. "Little Boy Blue kept the cows in the meadow. The Giant came down from the sky and stole all the blue for itself. Left nothing but yellow behind. Yellow and grey and black."

"Well, that sure clears it up," Jayne said with disgust. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Apparently our course takes us toward Shadow?" Inara inquired.

Zoe nodded. "We'll be making a Shadow fly-by in three days. I was surprised when he ordered the course. He's avoided going within sight of Shadow the whole time I've been flying with him." The whole crew felt the significance of Zoe's statement, except Neumann.

"It's on account of the experiment," Ip said. "He set the course so that I could get the measurements necessary to…" No one was listening to him. The wagons were still circled.

"_Why_ does he avoid Shadow?" Simon asked.

_Of course the Doctor would ask the stupid question_, Zoe thought. Then she reconsidered. Maybe the question was actually very insightful. Why _did_ Mal avoid Shadow, other than the obvious reason that it was painful? Captain wasn't especially known for taking the best course of action in dealing with painful subjects. She opted not to answer Simon directly. "The area around Shadow is an embargoed zone. Illegal to fly within four thousand miles of the surface."

"Since when has the mere illegality of anything actually stopped the Captain?" Simon asked.

Zoe scowled at Simon as she registered the look of shock on young Neumann's face. 天啊 Tiān ā that boy was naïve. Still didn't have a clue what kind of boat he'd signed on to. Unless, of course, he was a Blue Sun agent, and knew _exactly_ what kind of boat he had signed on to. Good thing he didn't know the cattle were being smuggled.

"Our course sticks strictly to the legal side of the boundary," Zoe informed Simon. "The Captain has no desire to attract the attention of the authorities."

"There's also the matter of safety, isn't there?" Inara asked. "Isn't that the reason the Alliance established the embargoed zone in the first place?"

"The reason they gave," Zoe interjected, obviously skeptical of any reason given by the Alliance.

Ip spoke up. "Shadow is the most volcanically active world in the 'Verse. There have been massive volcanic eruptions, with plumes of ash rising hundreds of miles above the planet's surface. There's even the possibility of volcanic ejecta into space."

"Volcanic ejaculate?" Jayne asked, his curiosity aroused.

"Shadow might spew out rocks into space at any time, Jayne," Simon interpreted.

Now the others were interested in what Ip had to say. He was the only one with particular knowledge of the geologic situation on Shadow, even if it was knowledge gained from his studies rather than from any personal experience.

"Shadow has a huge amount of sulfurous volcanic activity. Sulfurous compounds such as hydrogen sulfide gas and sulfur dioxide have poisoned the atmosphere. The sulfurous clouds, as well as surface coatings of elemental sulfur from vents and fumaroles, have given the planet its yellowish tinge."

"Air's not breathable?" Kaylee asked.

"No. The climate alteration was massive and global. At first there was a huge increase in surface temperature. Massive quantities of magma rose to near-surface, and when the lava overspread the valleys, burning and burying the grasslands and forests, the atmosphere warmed as the lava cooled. The lava poured into the sea, on a scale not seen anywhere else in the 'Verse, literally boiling it away. Shadow was once a blue and green world, similar to Earth-that-was, I'm told. Terraforming took hold quite well. Shadow had bountiful oceans. The continents were situated mainly in the temperate climate zones, and by an accident of geography there was very little desert, and a lot of green." Ip paused, remembering the many images of Shadow _before_ that he had studied. "The plant life that wasn't in the direct path of volcanic activity was killed by the sudden temperature change and the acid rain caused by the hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and other compounds in the clouds.

"The people were killed, of course. Some were caught in the path of the eruptions, swept away by pyroclastic flows…"

"He means lava—"

"Extremely hot gas, rock, ash and mud, moving at a very high speed," Ip corrected. "There were also jökulhlaups—"

"Yokel whats?" Jayne interrupted.

"A sub-glacial outburst flood," Ip replied, then clarified. "If a volcano is underneath a glacier, and the lake of melt water is suddenly released when the glacial dam breaks, hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water may be released in a matter of minutes. The effect is catastrophic, as you might imagine. The jökulhlaups have occurred mainly on the part of Shadow's northern continent known as the Northside, because of the extensive ice field in the mountain ranges. But mostly people died of asphyxiation. The toxic gases killed them." Everyone was silent, thinking about the many horrific ways to die Ip Neumann had just outlined. "In some cases, it was the heat. Intense heat that burned up everything organic."

"Didn't no one survive?" Jayne asked.

Zoe took up the story. "There certainly were people who survived the first eruptions. But the Alliance wouldn't evacuate them. This was towards the end of the War, remember, and all attention was focused on Hera, where the Battle of Serenity Valley was reaching its heroic conclusion," she stated with heavy irony that was lost on Ip. "Shadow was a world in rebellion. Sent more soldiers to the Browncoat cause than any other world of its size. It was the Alliance bombing that set off the chain reaction that led to the disaster."

"The Alliance couldn't muster the resources in time," Ip said, reciting the version of history he had learned at school in the Core.

"Alliance didn't care to rescue the rebels of Shadow. Figured they were well rid of them," Zoe replied.

It was Simon, surprisingly, who broke the standoff. "I thought volcanic eruptions generally caused a _decline _in global temperatures," he said reasonably.

"They do," Ip replied. "The heat I was talking about is generally the direct result of proximity to an active eruption site. The cooling comes about as a result of the gases injected into the stratosphere—the so-called volcanic winter. The sulfur dioxide gets converted to sulfuric acid, which stays suspended in the stratosphere for years. The sulfate aerosols reflect heat from the sun, and they also absorb the heat radiated up from the surface of the world. Historically, on Earth-that-was, we have a record of hemispheric crop failures for an entire year as the result of a single volcanic eruption, while extended periods of volcanism have been implicated in causing or at least contributing to mass extinctions. Shadow has undergone eight years of massive, world-wide volcanic activity. There is no place on Shadow that could sustain plant or animal life anymore."

Much of Ip's vocabulary had passed Jayne by, but Inara interpreted. "It's like having the lights turned down to low all the time. Nothing can grow."

"Good god, can a planet that is that messed up ever be fixed?" It was Jayne who asked.

"That's a question I would like to answer," Ip said. "Shadow was a very productive world until this disaster struck. I'd like to think it could be so again—that it's worth fixing. But until there's some consensus as to what went wrong, I'm afraid re-terraforming is out of the question. Too risky."

. . .

.

.

.

glossary

不要 Bù yào [Don't want to]

天啊 Tiān ā [God]

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><p><em>New Year's Resolution: I will give fanfic writers more feedback, and write more reviews. :-)<em>


	10. Chapter 10

Shadow, Part 5b

_Serenity approaches Shadow._

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><p>Nobody spoke to Mal about Shadow when he emerged from his bunk the next morning. In fact, the dark cloud around him was so palpable that most of the crew avoided him for the entire day. He worked in solitude amongst the cattle, and spent the rest of the time on the bridge, seeing no one but Zoe, who brought him food but knew better than to accompany it with talk, and River, who came to take the helm.<p>

"She can help. He can, too."

"Don't want to talk about it, River," Mal said bluntly. He had spent much of his day watching Shadow grow into an ever-larger disk of glowing dirty yellow, not an exercise designed to build his calm.

"I know," she replied. She sat silent for some time, focusing on the console as Mal transferred the helm to her desk. A while later, River spoke again. "She understands loss. You can tell her."

"I'd appreciate you keepin' out of my mind," Mal replied, testily. He made no move to leave the pilot's seat, but just sat, staring out the window at the large, baleful disk.

River sat silent for a long time, reviewing the log, running routine checks of flight and navigation systems, and re-calculating the course. The last task she did just to take up more time. At last she spoke again. "He wants to help."

"Who wants to help? Help with what?" Mal asked. His mind had drifted, and he had no idea who she meant.

"He knows things. Things you need to know. The reality is terrible, but it's not as bad as your imagination."

"River, you just leave my imagination to me. It's not a fit place for you to be lookin'." He stood up and left the bridge.

River was satisfied. She had succeeded in getting him off the bridge, away from his obsessive staring. And she had planted the seed. She hoped it would grow, that _he_ would grow, and the new growth would heal some of the damage.

. . .

Ip Neumann and Simon were discussing a point of scientific interest in the infirmary when the Captain's voice sounded on the comm. "Dr Ip, you might want to join us on the bridge. There's a view you might want to see." There was something odd, tight and strained about the Captain's voice. Simon noticed it right away, and when Neumann headed for the bridge, he decided to follow.

When they arrived at the bridge, Mal and River were sitting in the pilot and co-pilot seats, respectively. Neumann's attention was immediately taken up by the view. They had come a lot closer to Shadow since he last looked, and the planet loomed large in the viewing window. Part of it was in light, but most of the disk was in shadow. The volcanic activity was remarkable, visible even from space. Large ash clouds from volcanic plumes floated on the prevailing winds in grey bands that streaked the yellowish atmosphere in the lighted crescent. On the dark side, spider webs of glowing red cris-crossed the blackened surface, active lava flows large enough to be visible from space. Simon thought the planet looked like an image of hell he had once seen in a painting, and he found himself wondering if the artist had seen Shadow from space. As they watched, they witnessed a truly extraordinary sight. Rounding the curve of the planet, they saw edge-on, in perfect silhouette, the cone of a colossal volcano in active eruption. The plume of ash, steam, and debris rose hundreds of miles high into the atmosphere. Neumann and Simon watched in awe at this demonstration of the incredible power of natural forces. Later, Simon would remember this as the reason he had not paid attention to Mal.

A sudden commotion at the pilot's seat drew everyone's attention away from the view. Simon's first thought was that the Captain was having a seizure. He flailed his arms and kicked with his legs, smashing the dials and screen on the bridge console with feral energy, as plastic dinosaurs and shards of glass scattered across the bridge. His breath was rapid, gasping, and his eyes were open but clearly not seeing what was before him. Mal was a strong man and a trained fighter, and he moved with a desperate strength. He was also armed, and Simon wondered what strange thinking had made Mal carry his weapon today, aboard Serenity, in space. He hadn't pulled the gun, thank goodness, but Simon knew Mal was an incredibly fast draw, and he was unwilling to tempt fate by approaching him. Simon dared not intervene as Mal struck with wild energy and shards of glass flew off the console. The Captain was shouting, gasping "No! no! no!" but for the most part his words were incomprehensible. Blood dripped from a gash on the Captain's head and his arms and hands were bloodied, and Simon noted a jagged strip of metal torn from the console. He wished he'd had the foresight to bring a hypo gun.

Neumann had backed away at the Captain's sudden violence, and that's when he noticed that River, too, seemed to be having a fit. She sank down to the floor, hugging herself and rocking, her attention focused on the Captain with a look of pain and concern, as her mouth worked in silent distress. A second ago he wouldn't have believed that anything could tear his attention away from the awesome natural phenomena visible on Shadow, but between the Captain and River, gasping, twisting, clawing, flailing, rocking, Shadow was completely forgotten.

The commotion on the bridge had drawn Zoe's attention. She arrived on the bridge at a sprint, took in the situation in a glance, and in an instant she had knocked Mal out cold with a single blow. He slumped to the floor. River's sobs subsided, as she, too, collapsed like a rag doll on the floor.

Zoe exchanged a look with Simon. "Flashback," she said, and Simon nodded.

"Help me get him to the infirmary," Simon requested. "He's going to need stitches on some of those gashes." He reached under the Captain's shoulders as Zoe pulled the dazed Captain up. "Ip, will you—?" he requested, gesturing with his look toward River.

Neumann looked uncomprehendingly from the Captain, to River, to Zoe, to the smashed console, to Simon. "PTSD," Simon said tersely. "Something triggered the Captain."

Ip stared a moment, then scrambled over to where River lay as Simon and Zoe helped the Captain down to the infirmary. "River?" he asked, putting his arm around her shoulders and lifting her gently to a sitting position. "Are you alright?"

"So painful." River spoke as if breathing hurt her.

"Are you in pain?" he asked with great concern. _Broken rib?_ he speculated, and began looking for an injury.

"_His_ pain," she gasped. "Hurts him so much." She looked at Ip with huge, sad eyes. "Broken. Conflates imagined horrors on Shadow with real horrors of Serenity Valley. Fights for his life." Tears ran from the corners of her eyes, as she repeated, "_Broken"_ in a small voice.

. . .

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.

.

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><p><em>AN: __And now a word from my inner science geek: I drew a lot of inspiration for this story of Shadow from Io, Jupiter's moon. Check out http: (slash slash) en (dot) wikipedia (dot) org/wiki/Io_(moon) for a picture of a very sulfurous world, and scroll down a few pages to see an amazing picture-vid sequence of Tvashtar Volcano on Io erupting - the image I had in mind when writing the description of Shadow's volcano. Oh, and leave a review while you're at it._


	11. Chapter 11

Shadow, Part 6a

_Spacewalk. Catharsis._

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><p>Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Neumann had heard of it, of course, and had thought he understood what it meant. But in the face of the graphic demonstration he had just witnessed on the bridge, he had to admit to himself that he had had no clue. The Captain hadn't been avoiding his questions about Shadow out of pure cussedness, after all. He'd just been trying to avoid opening a Pandora's box of trauma, the scope of which Neumann could only just begin to comprehend. Neumann realized that he'd been approaching the terraforming disaster on Shadow all wrong. It wasn't just an academic question, a logical sequence of A leads to B yields C. It was a human tragedy of epic proportions. An entire world had been wiped out. An entire way of living. He tried to imagine what it would be like to have his entire home planet, his family, his friends, his childhood, everything he had grown up with, everything he had lived with and regarded as stable and permanent, all taken away in a single disastrous event. He found he couldn't. Yet it was something the Captain lived with every day. He felt sad beyond sadness, bleak beyond bleak.<p>

Neumann wondered how the Captain had survived the blow. Survived so well as he had. Neumann thought that he himself would be driven crazy, if he had to live with the knowledge of such an event. Now he found himself marveling, not at why the Captain was such a closed-off, ornery, cross-grained 混蛋 húndàn on occasion, but at how the man managed to retain any sense of humor at all. For Captain Reynolds, despite having his dark and brooding moments, did not spend his life in a black funk. He smiled, cracked jokes, told funny stories, and he loved his crew. He had even managed to reminisce fondly about his childhood home. Neumann wondered how he could do it. The Captain was far more resilient than anyone he had heard of, living or historical. He had retained his humanity in the face of stresses that would break a lesser person.

No wonder the crew of Serenity was so loyal. Who wouldn't fight to protect such a remarkable person? Neumann looked back with disgust at his ham-fisted attempts to get information about Miranda and Shadow. It wasn't amazing that they'd circled the wagons and left him on the outside. It was amazing that they'd allowed him to stay within sight of the circle. He wondered he hadn't gotten himself tossed out the airlock on the first voyage.

Time to lend what skills he could to the fight. He was going to find out what killed Shadow—how and why. It was the least he could do for his Captain.

. . .

The time for the spacewalk was fast approaching, and Ip Neumann had made enormous changes to his plans in the last twenty-four hours. He would conduct the gravitational anomaly study as planned, but he wanted to add an entirely new suite of instruments as well. He had some portable equipment with him in the small crate he had been hauling around with him since leaving Blue Sun. He opened the crate and began pulling out the scientific instruments it contained—a spectrograph, particle detector, magnetospheric sensors, laser range finders, as well as instruments that measured and recorded sections of the electromagnetic spectrum from ultraviolet through visible light to infrared. He wanted to be able to measure chemical composition, shifts along fault lines, ground pressure waves, magnetic and radiological anomalies. Simon's portable diagnostic lab was pressed into service as well, and Kaylee, River, Simon, and Ip worked feverishly in the infirmary prepping and modifying the scientific instruments.

Ip had a focus. Something about the Shadow terraforming accident had always bothered him, and he felt that if he could find the key to that one element, he would crack the case. He didn't understand how the chance hit to the terraforming station by an Alliance bomb could possibly have set off a chain reaction that could destroy the planet. The terraforming station should have been more robust than that, especially with the inherent redundancies built into system. Shadow had had multiple terraforming stations, with overlapping functions. It should have taken more than one bomb—more than one bombardment, in fact—to cause any problem at all, let alone a problem on a planet-wide scale. The instrument suite was designed to sweep a broad spectrum of areas for anomalies.

In addition, Ip prepped a small capsule with detectors that would sample the atmosphere, rock, soil (if any), rainfall, and gather seismographic and other data on the ground. If there were signs of any life-forms, even bacteria or blue-green algae, the samplers might find them. He would have liked to rig these instruments with a transmitter to send data back to the ship, but there wasn't time to get that elaborate, so he included a locator beacon of the type he had commonly used when he worked at Blue Sun, in the event that he had the opportunity to return to Shadow and retrieve the capsule. Kaylee rigged the capsule with an expendable thruster and a heat shield built of scrap, and River programmed the trajectory. He wanted the capsule to land somewhere in the Northside area of the northern continent, because that was the nearest landmass to the terraforming station that had taken the hit.

River didn't tell him, but she programmed the capsule to land at the coordinates of the Captain's former house.

. . .

Mal made a last-minute change to the spacewalking team. Although Zoe had intended to go out with Ip and River, at Mal's request she stayed inside, and Jayne took her place. Mal didn't say much, but Zoe knew her role was to standby on the bridge. The smashed console on the pilot's side was a reminder of what might happen, and she understood that she was to disable him if he did anything that might endanger the ship. Inara also claimed a place on the bridge, ready to assist as might be needed, whether it were calling for medical assistance or pinch-hitting as pilot or simply soothing Mal. The bright curve of Shadow filled the entire upper half of the bridge window.

. . .

The spacewalk was incredible. The bright disk of Shadow filled the entire sky above their heads. A quarter of Shadow was in the dark, but the reflected light from the bright portion lit their work area with a yellow glow. River worked seamlessly with Ip. She seemed to know exactly what he needed and exactly when he needed it. It was amazing to have all his needs anticipated. He and River set up the suite of instruments, securing them to the hull of Serenity, and then proceeded with the experimental protocol for the gravitational field anomaly study.

She always enjoyed being out in the Black. The first time, when she and Simon were hiding, Simon had felt sick, but River had felt joy. Later, when she donned a suit to escape Early—even then, with the ship in peril—the joy of the freedom of the Black had touched her. When her plan succeeded and the bounty hunter became another object in space, she had flown—no, floated—back to her home in perfect Serenity. Now, working side by side with Ip, she felt the joy again, the joy of the Black, and the anticipation of results. The light reflected off Shadow was only partly responsible for the glow she felt.

Science doc and River were completely absorbed in placing the blinky boxes around Serenity's hull like flowerpots. Then they were busy taking measurements, and considering that it was all supposed to be about measuring stuff on Shadow it was funny how they weren't hardly even lookin' at the planet. Jayne wasn't interested in the measurements, so he figured it was his job to look around.

It was an awesome sight.

Jayne didn't figure he was the kind of fella who awed easily, but he'd never been on a spacewalk this close to a planet before. It felt kinda strange, the great big presence of the thing overhead, taking up what felt like the whole sky, so that space wasn't black and empty, but full of great big yellow planet. He turned himself over for a better view, and gazed at the thing. Couldn't see the land forms so well on account of the grayish clouds and yellow haze, but he could see the black patches he reckoned were where the lava flowed out, and bright yellow spots where the sulfur vents must be. He looked from one edge of the planet clear to the other—it was like looking from horizon to horizon, 'cept it was a weird inside out way of doin' it—and that's when he saw something that shouldn't be there.

"What was that?" Jayne asked.

"What was what?" River and Neumann answered together, looking up from their machine.

"I saw a ship," Jayne said, pointing. "Who else is out here?"

River and Neumann looked in the direction Jayne indicated, toward the horizon of Shadow that Serenity was pursuing.

"There are too many," River said, and then Jayne spotted them.

Not just one ship. Many ships. Huge numbers of ships. Transports, by the look of 'em.

"No ruttin' way there should be so many ships out here. Zoe said it was an embargo zone. Say, Doc, you got anything there can scan those ships, see what they're carrying?"

. . .

Mal stared up at the surface of Shadow, not recognizing a single feature of the landscape. Longitude and latitude said it was the Northside above them, and he couldn't recognize a thing. It wasn't just the altered shoreline, or the lack of greenery. Grey patches and black patches covered the land where it was not tawny brown or lurid sulfur yellow. Ash falls and lava plains, he reckoned. Sulfur exudations. There were no words, no words to say or think or feel, no words in any language, no words that could possibly express it—no actions either. At that point he noticed moisture dropping on his hands as they rested on the console before him, and he realized he had been crying for some time. Zoe, bless her, hadn't said a word, nor given any sign that she noticed. But he knew she had. She understood.

. . .

Inara also understood. She didn't approach Mal or even signal her presence. This was his private grief. She knew something about loss, far more than Mal suspected she knew. But her loss didn't compare to the loss of a world. She had expected that Mal might have another flashback, that he would react with violence or anger as he had a few days ago in his bunk. She had thought that he might swear, in Chinese as he typically did when he was greatly moved. But he sat perfectly still. He was shocked to a point well beyond swearing. She noticed that he was silently weeping, cathartic tears streaming down his face unheeded as he stared, unmoving, up at the remains of his home. Her sympathy would be an intrusion. She sat perfectly still. She understood.

. . .

Mal wiped his face and blew his nose. It was then he noticed something that shouldn't have been there at all. Right at Shadow's edge, the edge they'd been chasing. Shoals of transports—thick as a shoal of herring, right in the embargo zone, where there shouldn't have been a single vessel.

. . .

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.

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glossary

混蛋 húndàn [bastard]

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><p><em>Shoals of reviews...or at least a few...would be nice. Thanks!<em>


	12. Chapter 12

Shadow, Part 6b

_The hunt is on._

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><p>Ip redirected some of his scanners toward the astonishing sight of a fleet of transport vessels. This was a spacewalk of wonders, indeed. The awesome sight of Shadow, stretched across the sky overhead, and the strange evidence of human activity within the embargo zone. As he looked through the viewfinder at the transport fleet, he saw a single vessel peel off from the swarm and fly solo—no he didn't. Must have imagined it, because he couldn't spot it now.<p>

. . .

"Two by two, Hands of Blue," River said with a note of panic in her voice. "They took all the blue away and left only the yellow."

Jayne looked sharply at her. She still had a smile on her face, but it was the kind of smile that got stuck there when you forgot you were smiling and had other things on your mind. He recognized that "two by two" right enough. Girl was about to go crazy-time.

"Doc," Jayne said, "River needs to get back indoors. I'ma gonna take her in."

Neumann looked over at Jayne just as the Captain's voice sounded in their comms. "Everybody inside. We've got way too much company here."

Ip began to object. "A few more minutes, Captain, please."

Jayne shot a look at Neumann and prepared to remove him by force, if necessary. It weren't necessary. Instantly Mal was back on the comm. "_No_. Come inside. 马上 Mǎshàng." Neumann immediately obeyed. Again, Jayne was amazed at how Mal could do that. They couldn't even _see_ the Look, but they both felt its power.

. . .

Mal couldn't explain it, but he had an uneasy feeling that had nothing to do with his proximity to Shadow and the ruins of his youth. Or rather, it did, but not in the same way. After this journey, he reckoned he was becoming a bit of an expert in uneasy feelings, and the nuances of this one were different. He felt like he was being hunted.

Before the spacewalkers were completely inside, Mal had done a wake scan, and the readings, while detecting nothing obvious, reminded him of the disturbances he had seen when Serenity was pursued by the stealth ship off the Lion's Mouth. He began to fly evasive maneuvers, cautiously, because sudden actions were just not feasible with the cargo of cattle. As soon as the spacewalking team was inside and divested of their suits, he called River to the bridge.

Her mode of arrival was all he needed to confirm the situation. "Giant came down and stole all the blue," she cried, as Jayne carried her to the bridge in his arms. "Little insect woke the sleeping Giant. Two by two, Hands of Blue…"

"I know they're there, Albatross," Mal said, turning in the co-pilot chair to look directly into her eyes. "You reckon you're able to fly our girl here?"

River was still whimpering, but she nodded. Mal stood and gestured for Jayne to set her down in the co-pilot chair. He stood directly behind the chair and placed his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down and spoke gently. "I'm counting on you to fly her gentle and smart."

River found the Captain's strength steadying. She needed the steady touch. Chaos lurked at the edges of her mind and threatened to overwhelm. _Two by two…and the barbarians were at the gate! Tearing of teeth and claws! Savagery…_she pulled back from the chaotic images, the incoherent screams, focus, _focus_…

"Focus, River," Mal said. "Focus on flying. Keep your mind with the ship."

"The invisible ship," River echoed. "Wonder woman."

Mal had no idea what she meant, but reckoned wonder woman would do better than mumblings about barbarians at the gate, so he gave her a reassuring pat and said, "Show us what wonder woman can do."

Zoe still sat the pilot's chair, in front of the wrecked console. A few pieces of equipment there were still working, among them the proximity scanner. "Sir, we got a bigger problem."

Mal glanced over. Zoe had put an image up on the wall monitor. It was a view of Serenity's wake. And there it was, menacing, approaching with speed, and streaming a trail of waste.

A Reaver ship.

"你他媽的天下所有的人都該死 Nǐ tāmādē tiānxià suǒyǒu de rén dōu gāisǐ!"

"哎呀, 我们 完了Āiyā wǒmen wán le!" Zoe added.

"Kaylee!" Mal called into the comm.

"Yes, Cap'n."

"Set us up for a hard burn. Anything you can do to get us an extra burst of speed—"

"I can set up the fusion injectors, Cap'n, it'll give us a boost, but it's like to burn out the Codippily relay—"

"Anything you can do, Kaylee," Mal interrupted. "We don't get a burst of speed soon, we're likely never to need the engine again." He heard Kaylee gasp as she fully grasped the seriousness of the situation. "Doc with you?"

"是啊 Shì a."

"Get him to help," Mal said, well aware of the kind of "help" Simon typically provided the mechanic, and making it clear with his voice that he needed the other kind. "Sooner would be better."

"Inara." Mal turned to her, the first sign he had given that he was even aware of her presence on the bridge. Inara suddenly knew that he had been aware of her all along, and saw that he was trying to tell her something more than what his words were saying. "Inara, the Reavers are on us, as well as a stealth ship." He looked deep into her eyes. "Please—prep the shuttle, take the civilians. If we're boarded by Reavers, make a run for it. Hera is near enough. There's a chance you could get away." His eyes expressed a thousand things there wasn't time to say.

"Who are the civilians, Mal?" Inara asked. It was a genuine question.

"Neumann and…" Mal stopped. Everyone else was crew. "Please, Inara…I want—" he put his hands on her shoulders as they stood facing each other. "You'd have a chance. I'd want you to have a chance, if I—. I…love you." He kissed her, deeply, passionately, briefly. "Please. Go."

"Jayne." The Captain had shifted modes instantly, and Jayne unfolded himself from where he'd been lurking in the corner of the bridge. "Weapons." Mal turned his attention back to River and the pilotage as Jayne sped off to collect and distribute weapons.

. . .

Inara and Neumann sat in her shuttle. Or rather, he sat uneasily, while she jumped up, sat down again in the pilot's seat, checked the settings, jumped up and paced anxiously, and directed tense glances at the screen showing the menacing progress of the Reaver ship. Neumann was babbling nervously about the instruments left out on the hull of Serenity, but she wasn't listening. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He wasn't supposed to die. _He's not supposed to die before me!_

_. . ._

"They still behind us?" Jayne asked, as he handed Mal a semi-automatic and a spare clip, along with a couple of grenades, which Mal hooked onto the gun belt he was already wearing.

"Right behind us," Mal confirmed.

"They say, a stern chase is a long chase." Jayne had heard that said, somewhere. The thought was comforting, and he clung to it.

"Unless they're going faster than us."

"Right, 'less they're goin' faster."

"Which they _are_, Jayne," Mal returned, dashing his hopes. "This won't be a long chase."

All eyes were focused on the view of the Reaver ship on the wall monitor. Reaver ships always had an element to them that baffled the rational mind, not that the rational mind spent much time considering that element when the Reavers were within view. It was too busy being terrified. And that, of course, was the point. Why the torn hulls? Why the odd parts welded on asymmetrically? Why the red paint? It was all designed to terrorize, to scare the quarry into a fatal error. Why fly with no reactor containment? Anyone crazy enough to fly that way was crazy enough to try anything. The Reavers weren't the first attackers to recognize the value of terrorizing their prey. Terror was their first-line weapon.

It certainly worked on Jayne. "C'mon, River, you dumbass, dodge 'em."

"闭嘴 Bìzuǐ," Mal returned. "Can't do those maneuvers with cattle aboard."

"Steady—steady—steady—" River chanted softly, like a mantra.

"Then I hope Reavers like beefsteak." Jayne's mouth was running. It was how he covered his rising terror at the thought of bein' et alive. "That's our only chance."

"We're _not _flyin' like crazy people," Mal stated firmly. "That's the Reavers' line."

"They're gaining," Zoe called.

Mal checked the monitor again. The Reaver ship was larger, but—_parts were missing?_ Parts were missing from the _middle_ of the ship. It took him a moment to figure out what he was seeing—or rather, _not _seeing.

"We can't see, but we _can_," River said, and it made perfect sense to Mal. "We can _see_ what isn't there." All the while she flew, not steady, but with a continuous series of small, minor adjustments.

Zoe looked puzzled and Jayne looked flummoxed. Jayne opened his mouth to say something about River going crazy again, but Mal shut him up with a look.

"Wonder woman's invisible airplane," River said, and Mal nodded. "It's our invisible shield." She was tracking Serenity's movements on the movements of the stealth ship, whose invisible shielding ironically made its outline against the backdrop of the Reaver ship perfectly clear. She kept the form of the stealth ship always between Serenity and the greater threat of the Reavers. The stealth ship, in its turn, was having trouble predicting the Reaver ship's course, clearly not having much experience at being stalked by an insane predator. It was hard to say if the Reavers knew the stealth ship was there, but it was likely interfering with the ability of their grapples to get a lock on Serenity, and Mal had to count that as a plus. Still, there wasn't much time.

"Who's wonder woman?" Jayne asked. "What the hell good's an invisible shield gonna do?"

"Kaylee," Mal called urgently into the comm. "Got that boost comin'?"

"Nearly there, Cap'n." Kaylee sounded out of breath. She was working as fast as she could.

"Reavers can't see the stealth ship," Zoe called out. "They're still gaining." There was a note of panic in her voice as the Reaver ship put on a burst of speed. "They're gonna ram—"

"Kaylee Kaylee Kaylee Kaylee," Mal yelled.

They all winced as they viewed the impact on the monitor. There was of course no sound of a crash as the Reaver ship collided full tilt with the invisible stealth ship—the now _visible_ stealth ship. Serenity was not struck. The impact had jolted the stealth ship's shielding system out of alignment, and after blinking in and out of blackness a few times, the shielding failed and the ship remained visible.

"Ready," Kaylee gasped into the comm.

"Do it." Serenity shot off with a burst of speed, and the Reavers made no move to follow, choosing instead to chase the prey that had dropped out of the sky onto the nose of their ship.

. . .

Mal went to the shuttle to tell Inara—and Neumann, of course—that the danger was past. He entered without knocking, and smiled with relief at Inara. A second later they were enveloped in each other's arms, kissing with the passion born of being given a second chance at life. He hadn't even registered Neumann's presence until the young man's uncomfortable noises rose to a level that penetrated even in the midst of their passion. They broke apart.

The Captain grinned at Neumann. "We're out of the woods, Dr Ip."

"Great. I'm…great," Ip repeated. "I'll just, uh, see to the scientific instruments, then." He squeezed past the couple and dashed out the shuttle door.

"That's…good then," Mal replied, already gravitating back into Inara's arms. She had the presence of mind to shut the shuttle door. "Seems to me we had some unfinished business," he said huskily, and they hastened to resume where they had left off.

. . .

.

.

.

glossary

马上 mǎshàng [Now]

你他媽的天下所有的人都該死 Nǐ tāmādē tiānxià suǒyǒu de rén dōu gāisǐ [F**k the whole damn 'Verse (translated in the show as F**k everyone in the universe to death)]

哎呀, 我们 完了Āiyā wǒmen wán le [We are in really big trouble (lit. Damn, we're finished/done for)]

是啊 Shì a[Affirmative]

闭嘴 Bìzuǐ [Shut up]

* * *

><p><em>AN:_ _The End! Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought in a comment or review._


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